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Douglas Hofstadter
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' Artificial Intelligence
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TPUG Magazine
JAN
Feature: Artificial Intelligence
6 Exploring Brainy Gadgets
An interview with Douglas Hofstadter
1 A Piece of My Mind by Avygdor Moise
13 Turing and Beyond by Adam Herst
14 Artificial (Fake?) Intelligence by Jim Butterfieid
16 Expert System, Novice User by Dave Powell
Articles
1 8 Amiga Dispatches by Tim Grantham
20 The Electronic Cottage by lan A. Wright
Reference Section
21 Punter BBS Commands
Micro Processes
29 File Recovery by John Easton
29 Doubling 1526/MPS802 Ribbon Life by Howard M. Mesick
30 Print Using And Rounding by Elizabeth Deal
30 The ABasiC Dir Command by Chris Johnson
31 Fear Of Mice by Chris Johnson
Reviews
36 Vizastar by Malcolm O'Brien
37 1541 User's Guide by Ian A. Wright
38 Dot's Nice ... by Paul Blair
40 Indiana Jones in the Lost Kingdom by Robert J. Sodaro
40 Sea Voyagers by lan A. Wright
41 HRT Super-Res Graphics Board by Tom Stiff
42 Karateka by Ajay Jindal
42 Adding Power To Your Commodore 64 by Dave Powell
42 Ollie's Follies by Michael Quigley
Departments
2 Inside Information
4 The Answer Desk with Malcolm O'Brien
5 Line Noise with Lana Coviello
12 Marketplace
32 Additions to the TPUG Software Library
33 TPUG Software Order Form
42 BBS Password for January
43 Products Received by Astrid Kumas
44 Calendar of TPUG Events
45 Bulletin Board /Classifieds
48 TPUG Magazine Distributors
48 TPUG Contacts
48 Index of Advertisers
Inside Information
After two years before the masthead,
and one year as Assistant Editor, Mary a
Miller has left our magazine to work as
principal nabob of a weekly newspaper.
As the real brains and chief inspiration
behind TPUG Magazine during her
tenure here , Miller was never one to let
the allure of personal glory or worldly
success distract her from the task of
bringing you your all-but-monthly dose of
Commodore-related information. Until
now. We thank Mary a for her extraor-
dinary contribution to the magazine, and
for putting up with us for so long; and we
wish her every possible success in her
new job.
Luckily for us, we were able, at very
short notice, to blackmail regular con-
tributor Tim Grantham into taking over
the Assistant Editorship. You will pro-
bably remember Tim's feature article on
C-64 music in our November issue (which,
by the way, he will be updating next
month), and his other articles over the
past two years. Tim is also one of TPUG's
sysops on the CompuServe Information
Service, and one of the things he'll be do-
ing for us is keeping track of the all the
Amiga news and gossip that's rife on CIS
these days. We welcome Tim to the
magazine staff.
As part of this month's feature on Ar-
tificial Intelligence, we were fortunate in
obtaining permission from the Canadian
Broadcasting Commission to reprint the
interview with Douglas Hofstadter,
which appears on page six. Many thanks
to Sara Wolch, producer of the CBC's
program Ideas, for her unstinting
cooperation. The complete text of the
interview is available from the CBC, at
a cost of five dollars (Cdn). The address
is: CBC Enterprises, P.O. Box 500, Sta-
tion 'A', Toronto, Ontario M5W 1E6.
They also publish a free reading list on
Artificial Intelligence — write to Ideas,
P.O. Box 500, Station 'A', Toronto, Ont-
ario M5W 1E6.
This month's cover is by Toronto artist
Thorn Wu, who also did the graphic ac-
companying the Hofstadter interview.
The guy with the beard near the top of
the cover picture is Jimmy -Bob Jackson,
a charter TPUG member whose
KoalaPad and Doodle pictures in the club
library have made him famous in his own
lifetime.
Last month in this space we foretold the
2 TPUG Magazine
appearance of detailed library documen-
tation as an insert in this issue. It seems
we spoke too soon. However, a library in-
sert is coming, in the near future if not
sooner, so don't abandon hope. This
month we predict that all-purpose
household robots will become an every-
day reality for most North Americans by
Christmas 1986.
Punter bulletin board systems are
widely recognized as being the most
powerful and popular single-user BBSs
available for Commodore machines. If
you want an idea just how much function
Steve Punter managed to cram into his
BBS program, consult the centre eight
pages of this issue. The documentation
there, written by Steve himself, covers
all the BBS commands, with the excep-
tion of a couple of recent additions that
we hope to cover in an update in a future
edition. By the way, this month's ref-
erence insert is the second of what could
be a long series, depending on response.
Let us know what you think.
The editors □
A Message From TPUG
Please accept TPUG's sincerest apologies for any inconvenience you may have
suffered in your dealings with the office in recent months.
Last August we moved to new offices to consolidate our operations and reduce
our costs. In order to further consolidate, we reduced staff as well. This led to
a backlog of orders and memberships to process in the fall.
In December, when we were just starting to get things back in order, our hard
disk crashed, with our membership, invoices and Disk of the Month subscrip-
tion series. Much of this data had to be reconstructed from hard copies.
These problems made us realize that the systems we have used at TPUG since
its inception would no longer serve. It was time to switch to new, more efficient
programs that would work faster and give us better access to the information
we require. After some study, we decided to upgrade our computer hardware
to IBM compatibles. Commodore Canada markets the PC 10 - an IBM PC com-
patible — and we decided to go with this system. Implementing the new con-
figuration brought its own share of troubles, however, and a delay of almost
a month.
Acquiring the new hardware was only one step, however. Memberships were
processed and subscriptions entered. Many hundreds of hours of work were done
by volunteers at night and on weekends. Everything was finally caught up in
mid-January. It was then a matter of duplicating the disks and mailing them
out. By the time you read this, everyone should be up to date and have everything
that they ordered.
As you already know, the magazine was also delayed by the move to new of-
fices. We also had a chronic problem with advertising, which again was mostly
the fault of an antiquated system. We have now hired a full-time advertising
sales agency, and look forward to a much smoother operation. After the next
issue, we should be back on schedule, and you should be receiving your issues
before the cover date.
We appreciate the phone calls and letters we have received reminding us of
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Without this spirit of helping, we could not have got it done.
If anyone has not received their order yet, please contact the office as soon
as possible, so that we may straighten out the problem. Thank you for your pa-
tience and your continuing confidence in us. We are here to serve you.
Bruce Hampson
TPUG General Manager D
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The Answer Desk
with Malcolm O'Brien
Changing disk names
/ have been copying some disks that
friends have lent me, using an Epyx Fast
Load cartridge on my Commodore 64. In
most instances, I would like to change the
names they have given their disks to
names that I have chosen but, when I copy
the disks, the names are automatically
copied along with the data, overwriting
the names with which my disks were for-
matted. My question is this: is there a way
to change the name of a disk after it has
been copied/saved? I must add that I ac-
quired my 1541 only recently, and am not
too familiar with it.
Ron Charbonneau
Brampton, Ontario
There are a few ways in which you can
accomplish this, Ron. Several utility pro-
grams in the TPUG library will enable
you to change a disk's name {among other
functions). Numerous disk utility pro-
grams are available commercially as well
— in fact, you've already bought one of
them! That's right, you can change the
disk's name with Fast Load. Here's how:
First type the British pound sign, just
as you do when copying, but this time
select E (Edit Diskette). You will see on
your screen:
TRACK 12 SECTOR 02
Remember that these numbers are hex,
not decimal. This means that track 12
(hex) is actually a reference to track 18
(decimal), the directory track. Overtype
the sector number to read 00, since we
want to read the first sector of the track,
where the disk name is stored. When you
hit RETURN, the sector is read in, and
the first 128 bytes are displayed on the
monitor. The disk name starts at the
144th byte of the sector, so we need to
look at the second 128 bytes. Just cursor
down until the screen changes, then posi-
tion the cursor on the byte labelled A090
(90 is the hex equivalent of 144).
On the right side of the screen you'll see
the disk name. For example, if the name
is AAA, the first three numbers on the
line will be: 41 41 41. If you overtype
these to: 42 42 42, you will see the name
change to BBB. If you wish, you can take
the opportunity to change the two-
character disk ID at the same time (the
bytes to change are 162 and 163 ($A2 and
$A3), the two bytes immediately follow-
ing the diskette name.
You have now done most of the
necessary work. All that remains is to
copy the changes you have made in
memory back on the the disk. To do this,
just type W.
Whizzer's Cattle
J am currently writing a game on my
Commodore 64. I have the title screen and
a few other screens done. Also, I have a
problem: how can I move the bottom of
BASIC? I've seen this in one of my old
Commodore magazines, but can no longer
find the article.
Chris Colohan
Oakville, Ontario
Using low memory for your graphics data
is a good idea for two reasons. Reason
one: BASIC will not overwrite your
graphics with variables. Reason two: the
VIC II chip can address only 16K at a
time. All graphics data must be present
in this 16K bank. There are four such
banks of 16K in the 64, and the default
is bank — the first 16K of the machine.
This is the area we're going to use after
we move the BASIC program space to a
higher memory location. This means that
you won't have to do any bank switching,
which will make things a little simpler.
To move the bottom of BASIC, you
have to change the pointer in locations 43
and 44. Location 43 is the low byte and
location 44 is the high byte . With this in-
formation we can find out where the start
of BASIC is, and we can change it. Your
BASIC programs usually start at 2049,
and are preceded (at 2048) with a zero
byte. The zero byte is necessary, so we'll
need to include one of those in our reckon-
ing too. Use this line:
poKe 43,i:poKe 44,64ipoK
e 16384, 0:neu
Now we have BASIC at 16384 ($4000).
We have the required zero byte at the
beginning of BASIC program space, and
the NEW took care of adjusting other
system pointers. The text screen is in its
customary place between 1024 ($0400)
and 2047 ($07FF). Other data (bitmaps,
sprites and so on) can be located between
2048 ($0800) and 4095 ($0FFF), and bet-
ween 8192 ($2000) and 16383 ($3FFF).
Of course you also have the usual places
for sprites in very low memory (704, 832,
896, and 960). You can not put graphic
data between 4096 ($1000) and 8191
($1FFF), because the VIC II chip sees
character images in this area of memory,
and your data will go unnoticed .
The next thing you have to deal with
is loading your main program (to the new
start of BASIC). The 'dynamic keyboard
technique' is usually used to accomplish
this. Here's an example:
1 if q*=chr*<34) goto 3
2 q*=chr$<34): pr in* "<c
lr><e dounMoad " ; q$; "u
hiz B ?q*; ",8,1"
3 poKe 43,1: poKe 44,64:
poKe 16384,0
4 print "<4 doun >r un <hom
e>";
5 poKe 631,13: poKe 632,
13: poKe 138,2: new
The main program can take care of
loading the graphics data. It goes
something like this:
1 a=a+l:on a goto2,3,4,5
2 load "bitmap ",8,1
3 load "colour", 8,1
4 load "sprites", 8,1
5 print " We 1 c o me to Wh i z
zer 's Cattle ! "
For this to work properly, you will need
to have saved (as PRG files) the main pro-
gram , the sprites, the bitmap and the col-
our, from the same memory locations that
you want them to return to. Good luck!
Missing Cartridge Quest
/ hope you can help me find a cartridge
made by Thorn-EMI called Jumbo Jet.
I'm also interested in flight simulation
cartridges or tapes. I already ham IFR
and the Suzy Q tape. I much prefer IFR.
Are there others available for the VIC 20?
Roger Martin
La Salle, Quebec
Software sources for the VIC 20 have all
but disappeared. However, when tapes or
cartridges can be found, they are usual-
ly priced very low. Recently I've seen bins
of them at places like Eaton's, as well as
the regular computer stores — unfor-
tunately none of it was of the type you're
seeking. The only other suggestion I can
make is to watch the classified ads in your
local newspapers or in TPUG Magazine.
D
4 TPUG Magazine
HAL timebomb
I have some important information for
anyone using the HAL BBS SyBtem for
the C-64. There is a set of secret com-
mands written into Version 4.3h that
allows any caller to wipe the message and
user disk, and reset the computer. I have
included the command sequence —
please, do not print it.
I have revised the code to eliminate this
problem and others, and will gladly send
a copy of the revision (along with a copy
of the uncompiled BASIC source code) to
any registered owners of this package.
Please send $3.00 (to cover the cost of the
disk and postage), along with a photocopy
of the front cover of your manual (show-
ing the registration number).
Bob Swift
BOB's Border BBS
Hal #000098
Bob's address is: Suite 10h, 530 Ban-
natyne Avenue, Estevan, Saskatchewan,
CANADA S4A 2G5.
Two faces of Epyx
I am writing to inquire if I am the only
one not getting any response from the
Epyx Company on the defective Fast
Load cartridges, and how to get through
to the company.
Right after I received the June issue of
TPUG Magazine and read the article
'Fast Load Lament', I wrote to Epyx ex-
plaining I must have one of their car-
tridges with the bug, and asking how to
exchange it for a new one. The only rep-
ly I got was an ad from them to buy some
of their software. In September, I wrote
to Epyx again and all I got was another
ad.
Howard I. Stearns
Alturas, California
It was most interesting to read 'An Epyx
Saga' in the November 1985 TPUG
Magazine. I have used two Version 3 Fast
Load cartridges on two C-64 computers,
one with a type 2 ROM, and the other
with a type 3, since last spring.
All in all they have been most useful ad-
ditions to the machines because the type
of work I do with the computers requires
frequent loading of different programs
for various tasks.
There are, however, three bugs that
seem to afflict the cartridges:
1) Any attempt to increase the number
of relative files on a disk will cause errors,
and may mess up the directory of the disk
in question. This happened to me once,
and my only recovery was to rewrite
track 18, sector using a 'disk doctor'
program. All seems to be okay, though,
if you first write to some large -numbered
record without using Fast Load. Since
this is often impossible with commercial
programs, it is best to remove the car-
tridge before using those programs.
2) Part of the cartridge's speed seems to
be because it omits certain built-in C-64
routines when loading. My experience
with this is that screen garbage appears
when attempting to load programs sav-
ed from a PET into a 64 with Fast Load.
The program appears at 1024, thus fill-
ing the 64's screen with data! If this is
a serious problem, just load the program
once without Fast Load, then save it
back to the 64. It will load properly after
that (but it won't readily go back into the
PET).
3) When using Fast Load as a DOS
wedge, it is safer to include the drive
number (for example, @sO:filename
rather than @s:fllename). I have a suspi-
cion that there are times when the 1541
doesn't know that it's supposed to be
drive 0, since I have had the occasional
hangup when I haven't specified the drive
number.
There are one or two other annoyances,
such as the copy option's inability to
transfer anything but program files, and
the unusual monitor, but these are minor
problems with a very useful product. I
wouldn't be without it.
Don Colby
Brighton, Ontario
Several months ago, I wrote you about
my V.l Fast Load cartridge. It
periodically scrambled my directory,
erased programs, and generally created
havoc.
After you published my letter, I also
sent a complaint to Epyx, (simply ad-
dressed to EPYX, Sunnyvale, California
— I had no further addresses). The post
office must have had an off day — the let-
ter actually arrived — and about six
weeks later, I received free the V.3 car-
tridge. I never did send them the old one.
I still have problems, albeit far fewer.
Occasionally I get garbage when I call for
the directory. Switching the drive off and
on usually solves that problem, and the
disk is not damaged. I still find every se-
cond attempt to format a disk produces
garbage, and requires redoing. The new
documentation is certainly far better for
that portion of the cartridge utilities I ac-
tually bother to use. I must congratulate
Epyx for their response, even though the
cartridge arrived without a covering let-
ter, or any explanation. The fact that they
exchanged the cartridge is in itself highly
commendable. For 99 per cent of my
needs, the cartridge is excellent. For the
few times it gets balky, I'm still way
ahead.
I also need some advice. Is there a word
processor program for the C-128 which
is at least as sophisticated as Paperclip
but also allows the creation and incor-
poration of graphs into the text? How
completely compatible are IBM CP/M
V3.3 program with my C-128?
Achim K. Krull
Agincourt, Ontario
The 1571 can read a variety of disks
recorded with the MFM (Modified Fre-
quency Modulation) technique employed
by manufacturers such as IBM, Kaypro,
and so on. If you have bootedup the C-128
in CP/M mode, the 1571 should be able to
read IBM CP/M software. However, you
will not be able to use programs intended
to run under MP/M (CP/M for multiple
machines) or CP/M 86 (CP/M for 16-bit
machines).
As far as we know, only the C-6A pro-
gram Newsroom from Scholastic Soft-
ware can integrate graphics into text.
However, its text editing capabilities are
not nearly as comprehensive as those of
a full-featured word processing program
such as Paperclip. G
TPUG Magazine invites you to ex-
press your views on Commodore
computing by writing to:
Line Noise
TPUG Magazine
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January/February 1985 5
Exploring Brainy Gadgets
An interview about Artificial
Intelligence with Douglas Hofstadter
Copyright e 1986 CBC
Douglas Hofstadter is an author,
physicist and Artificial Intelligence
theorist whose ■widely-published writings
have made him the most renowned worker
in the AI field today. His best-known work
is the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Godel,
Eecher, Bach: An Eternal Golden
Braid, published in 1979 by Basic Books,
which explores many topics relating to AI
in a literate and highly imaginative style.
His new book, Metamagical Themas,
drawing on his writings in Scientific
American magazine, is now available
also. Last December, the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation's radio pro-
gram Ideas broadcast an interview with
Professor Hofstadter. What follows is a
partial transcript, kindly made available
to us by the producer of the program, Sara
Wolch. The interviewer is Ideas host
Lister Sinclair.
* * *
LS: Doug, how can I tell that you're in-
telligent, or conscious, or creative? How
can I tell that amachine is intelligent, or
conscious, or creative?
DH: Those are good questions. On the
other hand, I could turn them around and
ask how do I know anything about you,
whether you're conscious, whether you're
creative, whether you're intelligent.
LS: Also good questions, but I thought of
it first (laugh). How, in fact, can we
recognize these things in each other, or in
any thing or person or animal or machine
out in the real world?
DH: Well, the way I look at it is that any
of those things, consciousness or in-
telligence, but intelligence particularly, is
a type of complex pattern, and we
recognize it by looking for that pattern.
LS: So I began by asking you about in-
telligence, and you seemed to change the
subject because what you're coming back
with is pattern recognition. Are you say-
ing that it's really the same subject?
DH: I am. In fact, I would say that
creativity and consciousness and in-
telligence and pattern recognition are
almost all synonymous terms. To me, the
word 'pattern' and the word 'category'
are very close. For example, a typical one
would be the pattern or the concept of a
vortex, a sort of a spirally thing that can
happen in your bathtub when water is go-
ing out; or it can be part of a hurricane,
where the hurricane is twisting; or it
could be something in a magnetic field;
or it could be the great red spot on
Jupiter, or something. It might happen
on a very small scale inside an atom. It
might be just a vortex in a painting, or
even a little twist on your head where
you've combed your hair in a cowlick.
And you could say all of those things are
examples of a certain kind of abstract pat-
tern that we call a vortex. But to me, you
could also equally well say they are
members of the category 'vortex'. So for
me, the word 'pattern' and the word
'category' are really very, very close, if
not exactly synonymous.
LS: Do you have these things around your
place? It's a blue card that I'm holding in
my hand. It 's about the size of an ordinary
visiting card, and it has a number, and
I'm warned on peril of my life not to lose
the thing because it's the way we get into
our building. Do you have those things?
DH: Oh, yes.
LS: And it's plastic, but inside is an elec-
tronic signal. And if you hold this up
against the right box, the machine will
open the door — or not, depending on
whether it's the right card or not.
DH: The problem with that kind of exam-
ple is that it makes very clear distinctions
between numbers that are allowed and
numbers that are not allowed, or let's say
patterns that are allowed and patterns
that aren't. But there is a tremendous
rigidity to the patterns that are allowed.
The borderline of what is in and what is
not in the category is far too rigid to be
counted, in my mind, as a concept or a
category. I will agree that it is in some
sense a very rigid category, but it's not
an interesting one. There's always a
degree of open-endedness to any in-
teresting category, as far as I'm concern-
ed. But that's why I chose an example like
vortex because we all recognize that
there's some essence in there.
LS: Some kind of twisty, spirally thing. . .
DH: Right. But it's very hard to pin down
exactly what that is, and it certainly isn't
manifested in the same way in every dif-
ferent instance.
LS: Okay. In other words, what you're
saying is that even the way we define pat-
tern is quite flexible.
DH: Absolutely.
LS: And there are many ways of defining
different patterns, and often different
ways of defining the same patterns.
DH: When I gave the example of vortex,
it did seem as if I was talking about the
v appearance of something. But I did not
mean to imply that it's only the ap-
pearance. Obviously, we have many
categories of things that are not even
visual at all. I mean, all the different
sounds that we would say sound French,
for example. That's an example of a
category — 'French -sounding things' . Or
we could even go further and say
'French-sounding music', and we could
say there's an example of a very abstract
category , a very abstract kind of a pat-
tern — the sound of French music.
LS: By French-sounding things, you
would mean particularly for an English
speaker, the sounds that don't normally
appear in English. For example, if we
wanted to say 'a good white wine' in
French —
DH: "Un bon vin blanc'
LS: There we go, there go four nasals. All
four sounds are foreign to English, and
so 'un bon vin blanc' certainly sounds
pretty French to me.
DH: Yes, okay. You fooled me with that.
I wasn't expecting to come out with the
four nasals in a row. That's very nice,
very nice.
LS: Could I go back to the vortices for a
6 TPUG Magazine
moment? I think that's fascinating
because it seems to me that what you're
doing, Doug, is making analogies.
DH: Agreed. Absolutely.
LS: You're sort of making analogies in
your head and almost treating the cowlick
as being a kind of metaphor for the great
red spot on Jupiter, and vice versa. So
what you're saying, then, is that patterns
don't even exist by themselves. Even the
simplest pattern exists in a much wider
context, and that must be a cultural con-
text, or some kind of human context, I
guess.
DH: Yes, but the ability to abstract
something out of its context, I would say,
is something that is a universal ability of
intelligence, and the reason that we have
evolved and we have so far survived , sur-
vived successfully in this world, is
presumably that our ability to extract pat-
terns from the world is not a random one.
We don't extract totally irrelevant things.
We extract basically essential things.
LS: Important patterns.
DH: Important things from the world,
ones that will serve us well in our day-
to-day tasks. And if we were attending
to trivial things all the time, we wouldn't
have survived. So, I would say that it's
all good to point out that patterns are in
some sense subjective or depend upon the
context, but at the same time, it's impor-
tant to note that the pattern recognizers
that have evolved and that survive are
probably going to be attuned to similar
patterns, because the criterion by which
they're judged is whether that leads them
to survive. And so I would assume that
pattern recognizers of all sorts, even on
different planets, would have found many
of the same kinds of patterns as we have
on this planet.
LS: Could we look for a moment at what
seems to have been a very primitive team,
a very ancient team, namely the team of
man and dog, in which each of the two
creatures concerned is capable of a dif-
ferent range of complementary pattern
recognitions. The man has good eyesight
and the dog has poor eyesight. The dog has
a great nose. So the dog is identifying
scents, the man is identifying sights. One
is much better at functioning in the
daytime than the other. The two together,
it seems, are a natural team, and sure,
it's a natural team based on pattern
recognition, based on, categories. Each, so
to speak, is dividing the world up into its
own packet of categories. And yet the two
together function as a very effective
category apparatus, so to speak.
DH: Yes. I don't think we have an
analogous term to the word 'blind', as far
as the sense of smell is concerned, but it
is something like we are sort of — not
quite, but almost — 'smell-blind'.
LS: / like that, 'smell- blind'.
DH: And it really is a completely alien ex-
perience to us. What must it be like to be
able to have this rich input of alt sorts of
odours around? We can't imagine it. I
could imagine having some kind of
chemical analysis that is portrayed on a
screen in front of us, and we try to use
our eyes to play the role of a dog's nose.
We're given a very complex graphic
display , and we use a sense that we have,
that is a very strong sense, to make sense
of something that we can't do just with
our own nose. It's sort of like the task
that a computer has when it is faced with
a wave form, when it's trying to unders-
tand or to — I guess 'understand' is the
right word — to recognize the patterns
of spoken speech. The computer doesn't
have the same kind of built-in faculty as
we do of recognizing speech, and it has
to proceed through an extremely
mechanical way where it is fed a
waveform through a microphone, and it's
as if this waveform were displayed on an
oscilloscope, and then it has to try to
figure out what is being said. You can im-
agine how hard that would be for us, if
we saw a wiggly line on a screen, in front
of us and we were told that is somebody
speaking. What are they saying?
LS: Oh boy, yes, that would be very rough,
wouldn't it?
DH: Yes. And that is the way computers
have to deal with speech. It's similar to
this idea of us having to deal with smells
visually. To me, this idea of processing
one kind of sensory input through
another — I'm saying speech turned into
a visual trace, and then looking at it
visually — is a very interesting one.
LS: / think you've done a kind of funny
end-run here on us, because we suddenly
seem to be talking about a kind of pattern
which is surely a sign of intelligence,
namely speech. And speech and language
— that is pattern recognition of a very
sophisticated kind.
DH: Well, I have to admit that the pat-
terns that fascinate me are the ones that
are very abstract and very complex, and
those patterns can really only be, almost
by definition, recognized by intelligent
beings.
LS: There has been an experiment done
with birds, who have very good eyesight,
of course — eyesight is something they
really rely on — and that 's the 'canary ex-
periment'. That's the one in which
somebody took groups of canaries and
trained them on chessmen. They had three
or four pawns and a knight, and they put
the food under the knight, which is a dif-
ferent shape. And pretty soon, the
canaries caught on that that 's where the
food was. And then they made it several
pawns and a bishop. It 's now a different
shape, all right, but not the same different
shape. And it didn 't take long, you know,
very much quicker, the canaries learned
that. And by a process of training, soon
you could give the canaries four or five
knights and a rook, say, and they would
go for the rook. They rapidly understood
that the food was under the different
shape. And then, one day, they gave them
January/February 1985 7
half a dozeji white pawns, all the same
shape, and one black pawn — same shape
again and a different colour. And sure
enough, they went for the one with the dif-
ferent colour. Now thai- surely is forming
an abstraction.
DH: It's a wonderful example. It's
marvellous. I would have liked to know,
however, what they would have done if
there had been four white pawns, one
black pawn and one white bishop —
where you have one of a different colour
and one of a different shape. That's an
amazing example, though, the canary ex-
ample. And another example of pattern
recognition in birds, that when I first
heard it, I found it almost impossible to
believe — but I have heard that it's been
reproduced, so I have to believe it; I really
don't know what to make of it — it's the
fact that a lot of slides were shown to
birds, and birds would be trained that
slides with a certain content would repre-
sent food, and slides with another kind
of content would not. And the birds ap-
parently were shown to be extremely
good at discriminating between slides
that showed pictures of people versus
slides that had no people in them.
LS: Pigeons, I think.
DH: I think it was pigeons. You're right.
And this meant that the people could be
partially obscured, they could be inside a
car, or they could be far away. There
could be several people, there could be
just one person. They could be very hard
to make out, they could be wearing all
sorts of clothes, they could be wearing
bathing suits, whatever. But the amazing
thing by contrast was that birds were not
good at discriminating between things
like triangles and squares. They could not
discriminate that, and that is really, to my
mind, just wild. It's so opposite to the
abilities of computers. It's so hard to get
a computer to make such distinctions. To
have a computer that could recognize
slides that had people in them versus ones
that didn't, but was unable to make the
square/triangle decision, is just — that's
crazy.
LS: Well, you said it yourself a few
moments ago; that what the living
creatures do is make important decisions.
Obviously to birds, it 's very important to
know whether there are human beings
around, and it plainly must be.
DH: That's right. But it opens up the
question of how are they doing it,
because, you see, when we try to make
computers do such a thing — make a very
sophisticated discrimination between a
slide with people — we consider that a
sophisticated discrimination (people, non-
people); and we consider the
triangle/square discrimination to be a
somewhat trivial one, because it's very
geometric. And a geometrical shape such
as a triangle is much more easily describ-
ed formally or mechanistically than the
distinction between person and non-
person. So we in the field of Artificial In-
telligence or Cognitive Science are try-
ing to build up these primitive discrimina-
tion abilities. And so we think that
anything that can do something
sophisticated ought to be able to handle
something trivial very easily. And yet it
seems as if the birds are unable to do
what we consider trivial, and are able to
do something very sophisticated. I sup-
pose human babies have that same quali-
ty. You'd be astonished if a baby could
distinguish between square and triangle,
but you wouldn't be very astonished if it
could distinguish between faces or facial
expressions.
The best chess-playing
programs have an
unbelievable amount of
rigidity built into
them. . .
LS: It sure knows Us mother from
everybody else.
DH: Exactly. So there's another example
of, in some sense, the primitive abilities
— or what we consider the primitive
abilities — so deeply hidden inside the
mechanism that they cannot be elicited
at a conscious level.
LS: If you take a baby and say to it stern-
ly: "Okay, baby, I want you to distinguish
between a parallelogram and a
trapezoid", it'll start yelling to mum. And
knoivs when it's got her, too. So that's a
very interesting point. The big thing that
babies learn, that I'm always fascinated
by — (I guess we all are, because they real-
ly have to learn it from scratch, and the
learning of it, as a friend of mine ivfio's
an anthropologist says, is simply child's
play) — is a language. Could we first talk
about the written language as a kind of
pattern recognition and then talk about
speech? Okay, how come, when I type
things into a computer, it '11 start putting
things back on the screen? So much so,
that I often think it's intelligent.
DH: Well, your example of the blue card
that allows you to get in or out of a
building is very similar to the example of
a computer being able to respond to cer-
tain key words. In fact the word 'key' is
used: 'key word', 'key card' are very
similar. You type a certain sequence —
and now I'm going to have to say (I'm
sorry): key strokes.
LS: Is that what they're called?
DH: Yes, 'keystrokes'. Yes, so you type
a sequence of keystrokes and you create
a word, and it's very easy for a computer
to recognize a specific sequence of
strokes. You know, 'A-B-C or whatever
it might be, some key word that it has
been programmed to recognize. Because
once again, it's a totally rigid distinction.
It's really on-off — it's all or nothing.
There's no blurriness.
LS: Yes, if you misspell a word or
something, as far as the computer is con-
cerned, that's simply not the word.
DH: That's right. Of course, there are
programs that are to some extent capable
of compensating. What I'm really saying
is you can write programs — and there
are programs — that will scan text and
that will find words that are close to
words that it knows, and will ask you
whether you don't mean something else.
In other words, they are capable of try-
ing to compensate for spelling errors. Not
nearly as fluidly or as flexibly as people
are, because they don't know what's go-
ing on in the context.
LS: But perhaps more attentively, in the
sense they don't miss it, as a rule.
DH: They don't miss it, but on the other
hand, they miss things like the distinction
between "its" and "it's", because both of
them are correct, and so it doesn't know
which one.
LS: Ah, both of them are correct, but
they're correct in different contexts.
DH: And it doesn't look at the context,
or even if it does look at the context, it
may not be sophisticated enough to
understand which word is really needed
there.
LS: When I was a kid, we often used to
say "that seems pretty funny", and we
would usually add "funny ha-ha", or
"funny peculiar". Are you familiar with
that one?
DH: Oh yes, I did that too, as a kid.
LS: Sure. Somehow we're aware that
tliere's an ambiguity there, and the am-
biguity has to be resolved, even for human
beings. It must be really a nightmare for
a machine, or rather for the human being
who is devising the machine.
DH: Well, the standard technique is to use
certain kinds of rules of thumb, usually
called 'heuristics' — rules which,are not
guaranteed to work, but which have a
certain degree of probability of working.
8 TPUG Magazine
LS: Ah, like what our managers like to
call 'guidelines'. Is that it?
DH: Perfect. Absolutely. And the typical
heuristic would be that in a context where
certain kinds of things are being discuss-
ed, one meaning of a word is more likely
to be meant than another meaning. It
very often goes wrong. This is perhaps
not the best example in the world, but if
you have back troubles or something like
that, and you're talking about something
with the doctor, and you go too fast and
the doctors says now, wait a minute, back
up for a second. The word 'back' is there
clearly not being used in reference to
anybody's back.
LS: He doesn't want you to get on your
hands and knees and stick your hack up,
DH: Right, exactly. But the word 'back'
has innumerable senses, and yet we're
capable of making that distinction. I
remember, in fact, the word 'sense' came
up a little bit earlier when I was talking
about the different senses that dogs and
people have, smell and so forth, and I us-
ed the word 'sense', meaning 'meaning'.
In the same sentence, I was using the
word 'sense' with two different senses.
The smell and vision and meaning, and
yet, in that sentence, it was perfectly
understandable. I mean I don't think
anybody would have been confused. Ex-
cept maybe a computer.
LS: Ah. But no body would have been con-
fused, but the computer conceivably could
have been confused in that situation.
DH: Yes, because the heuristics would
probably have said, "Hey, look, we're in
a context where we're discussing senses
ill the sense of smell, vision, et cetera, and
so the word 'sense' should be interpreted
that way."
LS: Well, the written language and the
problem, I suppose, of identifying the
meaning of words, is one whole big chunk
of pattern recognition, but speech is
something even worse, surely, isn't it?
DH: Spoken language is a fantastic pro-
blem because, as anyone who has ever
tried to learn a foreign language knows,
you can't tell where one word ends and
the next word starts.
LS: That's right. Foreigners don't know
how to speak their own language. You
read it in a book and you go to the coun-
try, and there they aren't doing it right'
DH: That's right. It's amazing, I'll never
forget when I went to Geneva as a
13-year-old, having studied French in
junior high school, and I hear this phrase
'saillez, saillez', over and over again. And
it's said so much as a unit, so clearly as
a unit, that I was sure that it was an im-
perative of some verb. And I could not
Figure out what in the world people were
saying, and I looked up the verb 'sailler'
in the dictionary, and it wasn't there. I
had no idea what people were saying. On-
ly after a couple of months of being in
Geneva did I finally somehow realize that
what they were saying was 'ca y est'. It
was three words, one after another,
strung together, pronounced just totally
fluidly, and it was a revelation to me.
LS: Okay. Now, this is probably what's
going on at home. We are talking to
somebody, and there's probably only one
or two people in the room, and there may
be a lot of noise and other things going on,
and a great number of signals, and this
voice is coming out of the radio. And I
have a suspicion that if we were to use,
A geometrical shape
such as a triangle is
much more easily
described formally or
mechanistically than
the distinction between
person and non-
person . . .
for example, the word 'sex', suddenly
everybody in that room would pay atten-
tion, that that signal would cut through
everything. And out of all those patterns,
that one pattern has been identified. And
that's one of the tricks in speech, isn't it?
Can a machine do that? Humans do it all
the time. Humans just did it. . .
DH: Yes. Well, I know that in the early
seventies, the Department of Defense in
the US wanted to have programs that
could do the monitoring of telephone con-
versations, and the idea was precisely
that, of being able to recongnize certain
key words as they occurred in telephone
conversations. Words such as 'spy* or
'communist' or 'bomb' or 'terrorist', or
things like that. And it proved to be a task
that was way beyond computers at that
point. They never reached the point
where a computer could handle more than
a few speakers using very restricted
grammar and a fairly restrictive
vocabulary under ideal conditions: that is,
speaking directly into a microphone with
no background noise.
LS: Yes. But at this very moment, you
know, there may be some kid sitting in a
basement somewhere devising a machine
to do that. I'm very wary of saying these
things are impossible because I well
remember people explaining to me, total-
ly plausibly, I was totally convinced, that
you would never get a machine to play
chess. And I believed it because I couldn 't
play chess; and why, if I couldn't do it,
certainly a machine couldn't; and sudden-
ly now machines are playing chess, and
playing chess very well indeed, I'm now
told. And I am also now told that if the
machine can do it, therefore it wasn't
really intelligence after all.
DH: Well, the slippery line does seem to
be precisely that. One poses challenges to
the computer scientists or the people
devising programs to do things, and they
wind up having a machine do specifically
what you said it should do. And very
often, even though it does, you feel
somehow that that isn't really what you
meant. I mean the ability to play chess
— or you learn something about what you
really meant . . .
LS: Could you say that again? Because
that's a very interesting remark. "You
learn something about what you really
meant. "
DH: Well, for example, this idea of get-
ting a machine to play chess. If you find
that a machine literally is able to play
chess, that's one thing. And there are
programs, as you said, that do play ex-
tremely well, but those programs are not
modifiable to play other games. The best
chess-playing programs have an
unbelievable amount of rigidity built in-
to them, and they can't move outside of
the -
LS: I'm sorry. Do you really mean rigidi-
ty built into them, or flexibility not built
into them?
DH: I guess you can put it that way, if
you want. I think that, yes, nobody in-
tended to build in rigidity, but in some
sense it was just a by-product of the way
they were designed, that there was an
absence of flexibility.
LS: Right. Whereas with my blue card
that opens the door, they intended to build
in rigidity, didn't they?
DH: Oh yes, that's right. So what you find
is that these machines that can play chess
very well, they do literally what was
prescribed, but when you consider the
human ability to play chess, it also entails
a sort of an aura or a halo around it:
namely the ability to play chess-like
games, the ability to do things that are
like playing chess. And when you make
a computer do it, you find, well, it can
play chess and it can do nothing else, and
this aura or halo of related things is miss-
ing. And that's a very, very big distinc-
tion between the way computers very
often do things and the way people do
them. □
January/February 1985 9
A Piece of My Mind
by Avygdor Moise
Copyright c 1986 Avygdor Moise
Before I started to write this article, I
searched in the dictionary for the defini-
tion of the word 'intelligence 1 , and found
the following descriptions: "mental
brightness, being clever, quick in mind"
and, yes, "department of state or armed
services dealing with secret information".
Obviously , the above definitions relate
to human intelligence. In view of the
vagueness of the definition of 'in-
telligence', I suspect that many readers
may have a false conception of the true
meaning of the term 'artificial in-
telligence', as it relates to computers. It
is therefore important to understand
clearly what it is meant when we speak
about artificial intelligence.
Natural intelligence
In order to survive, one has to learn to
adapt to new and unexpected en-
vironmental and social conditions. Past
experience is very valuable , since most of
the decisions we make are based on
similar experiences previously
encountered.
When the adaptation process is
biological in nature, and its effects are
long-lasting (from generation to genera-
tion), it is known as 'evolution'. The
evolutionary process will govern our abili-
ty to sense, analyse and respond to ex-
ternal stimuli. Our survival may therefore
depend on our ability to react promptly
to arbitrary events. If our reaction yields
a favourable result, we memorize it for
future use. If the result is unfavourable,
the reaction is marked as a failure, not
to be repeated should the situation arise
again. This is the learning process. Our
ability to learn, and to use what we have
learned effectively, is referred to as
'intelligence'.
What makes the computer different,
when compared to any other tools
mankind has ever produced?
We think of tools as being extensions
of our bodies. Tools amplify some of our
capabilities, letting us accomplish tasks
faster and more efficiently. Most of the
tools we have built have been designed
to accomplish a specific task, and cannot
be converted to perform functions for
which they were not designed: the tools
are not programmable.
The computer, unlike any other tool, is
10 TPUG Magazine
a general-purpose instrument designed to
perform tasks and control other
machines, according to instructions that
it was built to follow. The computer can
be thought of as an extension of our
brains, whereas all the conventional tools
can be considered extensions of our limbs.
The computer may thus control any man-
made machine the way the brain controls
our bodily functions.
The suggestion that the computer is an
extension of our brain is really an am-
bitious one. People (and all other living
entities) are complex creatures, and even
the largest and most complex computer
our current technology can produce is in-
capable of substituting for living tissue.
Computer intelligence
Even though our technology can't pro-
duce computers of a complexity and size
comparable to the human brain, computer
experts world-wide are researching soft-
ware and hardware tools for the develop-
ment of artificial intelligence and expert
systems. As a result, a few computer
languages were written to simplify pro-
gram development.
Some of the languages used include
assembler (pure machine code), LISP
(and LISP derivatives), Forth, APL and
other list-processing dialects. What
makes LISP-like languages better pro-
gramming tools than conventional
languages (like BASIC and FORTRAN)
in artificial intelligence programming?
We'll answer this question with some pro-
gramming examples.
Let's assume that we have chosen to
program a general -purpose desktop sup-
port utility in Commodore BASIC 4.0.
Starting with a two-function calculator,
capable of addition and subtraction, the
program might look like the one in Box
1. Here is a sample run (the computer's
output is in bold type, your input in is
regular type):
run
Ready? add
Enter x,y? 1 ,2
3
Ready? sub
Box 1
(An Unintelligent BASIC 4.0 Calculator)
1 gosub 10 :rem
call application
program
2 goto 1
:rem forever
10 input
'Ready
'; q$ :rem read function
20 if q$ =
"add"
then 90
30 if q$ =
"sub"
then 60
40 print '
Syntax
error, unknown
":q$
50 return
60 input
'Enter x,y";x,y
70 print x
■y
80 return
90 input
'Enter )
<,y":x.y
100 prim
x+y
110 return
Box 2 (An Intelligent but Untutored BASIC 4.0 Calculator)
1 gosub 10 :rem call application program
2 goto 1 :rem forever
10 input "Ready"; qS :rem read function
20 if q$ = "add" then 90
30 if q$ = "sub" then 60
40 print "Unknown ";qS : gosub LEARN
50 return
60 input "Enter x,y";x,y
70 print x-y
80 return
90 input "Enter x,y";x,y
100 print x + y
110 return
Enter x,y? 1,2
-1
Ready? mul
Syntax error, unknown mul
Ready. . . .
This simulation performs as expected.
The program is capable of adding two
numbers and subtracting two numbers.
When requested to multiply two
numbers, however, it replies with the
well-known message 'Syntax error' — it
could not handle unexpected input in-
telligently. It is incapable of learning a
new operation without being
reprogrammed!
If PET BASIC allowed, the program
could be slightly modified to handle unex-
pected inputs. The program in Box 2 is
a thought experiment in Commodore
BASIC. Here is how it might run:
run
Ready? add
Enter x,y? 1 ,2
3
Ready? sub
Enter x,y? 1,2
-1
Ready? mul
Unknown mul
Did you mean 'mul'? yes
Please define 'mul'?
(10) if q$ = "mul" then (40)
(20) print "Unknown ";q$ : gosub
LEARN
(30) return
(40) input "Enter x,y";x,y
(50) print x*y
(60) return 'mul' defined
Ready? mul
Enter x,y? 2,3
6
Ready . . .
The program as we have now conceived
it is self-modifying — if we list it after this
run, we will find it mysteriously chang-
ed (see Box 3).
I do not intend to propose in this
thought experiment a new method of pro-
gramming in BASIC (though I believe
that it is not too difficult to patch the com-
mand interpreter to actually execute the
suggested program): I wish only to show
the difference in the programming
concept.
Normally, programs are composed of
two distinct parts: the program section
and the data section. The program sec-
tion is the part that does not dynamical-
ly change: it cannot alter itself. If the pro-
grammer wishes to modify the construc-
tion of the program, he or she has to re-
edit the source code. In contrast, the data
section may be initialized at the beginn-
ing of the run, and the program may
change the contents of the various
variables.
In view of the above, it may be con-
sidered good programming practice to an-
ticipate all potential inputs, then write the
appropriate 'trap handlers' to prevent the
program from accidental failure (il-
lustrated in the first version of our
BASIC program). In practice (especially
. . .The computer can
be thought of as an ex-
tension of our brains,
whereas all the con-
ventional tools can be
considered extensions
of our limbs. .
if the program is very complex), you may
not be able to foresee all the possibilities
and write down all the actions that the
program may have to take. In such cases,
it may be beneficial to let the program
learn as it goes along, enriching its
capability through experience (some pro-
grammers may think of that as being
self-debugging).
The second version illustrates this idea.
When the program detects the unknown
input 'mul', it asks the user to teach it to
multiply. The moment the user types in
the multiplication instructions, the pro-
gram incorporates them into its code,
where they are available for future use.
This ability to self-modify is what
makes the program intelligent. The only
way this can be made possible is to let the
program read data, and then use the data
to patch itself. In other words, the pro-
gram executes the data.
The ability to bridge the gap between
the program code and the data code
makes it all possible. As you may be
aware by now, programming languages
like FORTRAN and BASIC will not per-
mit the user to dynamically (at run time)
enter a line of code and ask the computer
to execute it as if the code was entered
as part of the original program. LISP-like
languages do not differentiate between
data and program, making them suitable
for artificial intelligence applications.
For example, the expression (+12)
represents one list, which is made of the
three elements (atoms) ' + ', '1' and '2'. If
asked to evaluate this list, LISP will
return the result '3'. Note that it will do
it if (and only if) it is asked to evaluate
the list. To further illustrate, the
expression:
(eval (cons ' + (1 2)))
will construct the list (+ 1 2), then
evaluate.
To demonstrate some of the power of
LISP programming, I chose TPUG's
public domain version of XLISP (which
runs on the SuperPET under OS-9) to
write a simple calculator program (Box
4).
Here's an example session with this pro-
gram (the computer's output is in bold
type; the user's input is in regular type):
> (calc 'add 3)
Teach me
( (n) ( (setq ace ( + ace n)) ))
add
> (calc 'add 3)
3
> (calc 'add 4)
7
> (calc 'add 5)
12
> (calc 'mul 6)
Teach me. . .
Continued overleaf. ■ ■
Box 3
(The Intelligent BASIC Calculator, One Run Later)
1 gosub 10 :rem call application program
2 goto 1
rem forever
10 input '
Ready"; q$ :rem read function
20 if q$ =
"add" then 130
30 if q$ =
"sub" ihen 100
40 if q$ =
"mul" then 70
50 print "
Unknown ";q$ : gosub LEARN
60 return
70 input '
Enter x,y";x,y
80 print x
*y
90 return
100 input
"Enter x,y";x,y
110 print
x-y
1 20 returr
i
130 input
"Enter x,y";x,y
140 print
x + y
150 return *****
January/February 1985 11
Note that the calculator program does
not know how to calculate anything, but
it is willing to learn. Once the algorithm
for a given function is provided, it will in-
corporate it in its program.
Obviously, this program isn't perfect,
but it was written just to illustrate the
point. If you find the program and XLISP
interesting, vou may obtain a copv of
XLISP from TPUG. XLISP was written
in C, and will therefore run on your com-
puter even if you don't have a SuperPET
or OS-9 — as long as you have a good C
compiler. □
Box 4 (A More Intelligent XLISP Calculator)
Note, the lines beginning with an asterisk are comments included for clarity
— they are not part of the program.
* Define a new class of objects called 'calculator' . . .
(setq calculator (Class 'new))
" Define the calculator's internal variables. . .
(calculator 'ivars '(ace oplist keyboard fp hold))
* Define the action to be taken when a calculator is first invoked . . .
(calculator 'answer 'isnew 'Q
'( (setq ace 0)
(setq hold nil)
(setq keyboard "/term")
(setq oplist '(learn isknown show))
(print "Desk Top Calculator")
self
)
)
* Define the response to the signal 'learn'.
This is the INTELLIGENCE routine. . .
(calculator 'answer 'learn '(name / arglist function)
'( (setq oplist (append oplist (list name)))
(print "Teach me. . .")
(setq fp (fopen keyboard "r"))
* Input the method. . .
(setq hold (read (fgets fp) ))
(fclose fp) .
* Extract parameter. . .
(setq arglist (head hold))
* Extract function. . .
(setq function (head (tail hold)))
* Reprogram. . .
(calculator 'answer name arglist function)
name
* Find if the requested function is known . . .
(calculator 'answer 'isknown '(function)
'( (member function oplist) )
)
* Return the answer to: Does 'name' exist in 'names'?
(defun member (name names)
( cond
( (null names) nil )
( (eq name (head names)) t }
( t (member name (tail names)) )
)
)
it 'c'
* Create a new calculator and call
(setq c (calculator 'new))
(defun calc (function argument)
( cond ((c 'isknown function) (c function argument))
(t (c 'learn function))
)
::)
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12 TPUG Magazine
Conference
Date
Change
The TPUG Board of
Directors has decided that
because of so many other
conflicts in the spring
(especially the nice
weather), ourannual TPUG
Conference will be moved
to the fall this year.
The new date should make
it more convenient for many
of our attendees. This year's
conference promises to be
even bigger and better than
ever.
We are looking at many
new, exciting and different
ways of producing what has
always been the highlight of
TPUG's year. Look for
further details in upcoming
issues. /
Turing and beyond
by Adam Herst
Copyright ® 1986 Adam Herst
Since the turn of the century,
psychologists have treated human in-
telligence as the ability to discern pat-
terns, and to generalize and extend these
patterns to novel situations. The extent
to which someone possesses this ability
is usually measured with the infamous
Stanford-Binet and Weschler intelligence
tests. These tests cover a broad variety
of conceptual categories: verbal,
mathematical and spatial, among others.
The primary goal is the measurement of
a general ability to manipulate symbolic
information.
Intelligence tests must, however, im-
pose a definition of intelligence before
they can measure it. Such assumptions
must be kept in mind when interpreting
the results. Since we can't look into the
human mind, we are restricted to study-
ing the expressions of the mind through
observable behaviour. The only way to
study intelligence is through its expres-
sion, and that is usually limited to test-
taking behaviour.
By this time, I've probably given you
your fill of Introduction to Psychology, so
let's turn back to computers. In the
1930s, a young mathematician named
A.M. Turing was laying the theoretical
foundations for the modern computer. As
a result of his investigations into
mathematical completeness and corn-
putability, he described what he called a
Universal Machine, now known as a Tur-
ing Machine. This machine could solve
any logical problem that could be
characterized by a human problem-solver.
In other words, if a problem could be solv-
ed using a limited set of procedures,
manipulating a defined set of symbols in
a finite number of serially-ordered steps,
then a real-world implementation of a
Turing machine should be able to solve it.
Your microcomputer is a real-world im-
plementation of a Turing machine. Using
a finite number of serially-ordered steps,
the CPU of your computer manipulates
a defined set of numerical symbols using
a specified set of operations. A microcom-
puter is able to solve many of the pro-
blems that can be characterized by a
human problem-solver.
In the early 1970s, it was realized that
some of the functioning*; of the human
mind could also be considered implemen-
tations of a Turing machine. Computer
scientists, mathematicians and
psychologists began to consider human
intelligence — when defined as the abili-
ty to manipulate symbolic information —
as the functioning of a Turing machine.
It is this parallel that has encouraged the
attempts at reproducing human in-
telligence on a computer. If the set of pro-
cedures and symbols used by the mind
can be explicitly stated, then any Turing
machine should be able to replicate the
results they achieve.
Given the logical possibility of
reproducing human intelligence on a com-
puter, how would artificial intelligence be
recognized? If we identify human in-
telligence through observed behaviour,
then the same behaviour should identify
computer intelligence. If a computer's
behaviour measures up favourably
against that of a human, then it is fair to
say that the computer exhibits
intelligence.
Imagine that you are in a space ship
stuck in an earth orbit. The ship is equip-
ped with the most sophisticated com-
puting devices, capable of English
language information exchange, and sen-
sitive to the emotional side of human be-
ings. All of your communications are cut
off, both to the computer and to ground
stations on earth.
Suddenly your computer terminal ac-
tivates, and you are able to establish com-
munications with someone named Hal.
You begin an extended conversation, dur-
ing which Hal enquires about your
physical and emotional well-being, and
expresses concern over your situation.
Eventually, you find out that a method
has been found to return you to earth.
Before you can learn more, the com-
munication stops, and you are returned
to your solitude and left to wonder as to
the source of the transmission. Was it the
folks back home, or your onboard com-
puters? From the information you receiv-
ed on your terminal, you would not have
been able to distinguish whether you
were talking to a man or a machine. With
the proper degree of sophistication, com-
puters and their programs can simulate
seemingly intelligent conversations with
humans.
Attempts have been made to program
computers according to the principles of
accepted theories of human intelligence.
In the field of Cognitive Psychology (the
study of learning, memory, thinking and
reasoning), programs have been
developed that simulate accepted theories
of recognition, the learning of conceptual
definitions, and the processes of deduc-
tive reasoning. These programs strive to
achieve human-like behaviour from com-
puters, using models of human cognitive
processes.
More successful attempts at simulating
human intelligence have tended to come
from theories expressed through
mathematical algorithms dealing with
subsets of intelligent behaviour. Their
success may l>e due in part to the fact that
such theories are expressed in the natural
language of the computer, numerical
symbols. As pure Turing machines, com-
puters are ideally suited for the serial
manipulations required by mathematical
procedures.
While the human mind may also deal
in numerical symbols, a strong case can
be made that it also deals in other,
qualitatively different types of symbols.
Numerical symbols do not seem suitable
for the manipulation and expression of
emotional concepts, for example. The
human mind is not restricted to serially-
ordered manipulations. It is capable of
processing many types of information at
one time, and of processing a single piece
of information in many different ways. It
would seem impossible for computers as
implementations of Turing machines to
reproduce all aspects of human
intelligence.
The only constant in the computer
world is change. If you have owned a
computer for more than two weeks, you
have probably noticed that you can now
buy the same machine for half the price.
You can expect attempts to be made to
overcome the limitations of serially-
processed numerical symbols in artificial
intelligence. Some researchers look to
parallel processing as a means of
simulating the workings of the brain
more closely. For the same reason,
another trend has been towards
declarative rather than procedural pro-
gramming languages. At the heart of
these attempts is a conviction that elec-
trical impulses in an inanimate system
can simulate electrochemical impulses in
an organic system. □
January/February 1985 13
Artificial (Fake?) Intelligence
by Jim Butterfield
Copyright e 1985 Jim Butterfield, Permis-
sion to reprint is hereby granted, pro-
vided thin notice is included in the
reprinted material.
Artificial intelligence (AI)is a busy buzz-
word this season. And I fear that the con-
cept behind the term is hidden within the
myth generated by movies, books and the
press. It makes good fiction for a com-
puter to sulk, or boast, or worry about
whether it's getting old. And in the film
2001, it's moving when HAL 9000 says:
"My mind is going, Dave. . . I can fee!
it."'
But that's fiction. And, while artificial
intelligence is a real branch of computer
science, it has little to do with making
computers more human-like ('anthropo-
morphic'). The real computers that we
know and love (or curse) are mechanical
drudges that just follow instructions
placed in their memories. Cleverly writ-
ten instructions can cause the computer
to do seemingly clever things, like beating
you at chess. But you always know that
it's just a dumb machine.
We often assign personalities to
machines we use frequently. Betsy the
car may be getting a little old and shaky,
but she's a game old girl just the same . . .
When we say such things, we don't real-
ly believe that an automobile has human
characteristics. Similarly, we may iden-
tify computers as being friendly, comfort-
able or serious, but we don't really think
of them as living things.
There are a number of clever programs
that imitate human behaviour. Perhaps
one of the earliest of these was Eliza.
This program imitates the role of a
psychologist, mostly by echoing things
you say. For example, you could type in
I am gloomy and the program might res-
pond Why are you gloomy? If you con-
tinued from there with / can't get my act
together, the computer might say What
would you do if you could get your act
together? But it becomes easy to see that
the computer has no intelligence in the
usual sense — typing / am etaoinshrdlu
will get a reply such as Why are you
etaoinshrdlu? It's not really paying
attention.
Eliza is polite: in contrast, a similar
program from Great Britain performs a
similar task in a more aggressive way.
Perhaps it's a result of the National
Health Service, but Insulter starts by
asking What do you want, yon miserable
worm? and responds to your input in a
similar vein, / am gloomy might be
answered with How dull, so you're
gloomy.
A quite different style of 'intelligence
simulation' may be found in Activision's
Little Computer People Discovery Kit.
The purpose of this program is to set up
communications between you and the
little person who lives inside your com-
puter. Once you make contact, you may
chat with the little person to find out his
or her name and other details, such as
height, age or clothing. The little person
would usually rather play games, and will
tap on the glass of the screen to get your
attention. Strangely enough, each com-
puter houses a different little person; it's
odd to hear members of a user group
discussing what their various little people
are like.
None of these programs shows in-
telligence on the part of the computer.
Despite their charm and simulated per-
sonality, the programs are doing what
their programmers have planned. The in-
clusion of a 'randomizing' feature makes
such a program more variable, but it can-
not do anything new.
There is such a thing as artificial in-
telligence, however, and it's easy to write
simple programs that have it. Here's a
very simple definition: an AI program is
one that learns as it runs. That way, it
can draw its information from the user,
not from the programmer. The user often
doesn't know that information is being
supplied, but it is.
Take the simple program Animals, for
example. In this program, you are asked
to think of an animal, and the computer
will guess it. At the start, the computer
knows only two animals, say a horse and
a fish. When you signal that you've
thought of an animal, the computer might
ask Does it live in the water? If you rep-
ly No, it will guess Horse, and if you say
Yes, it will guess Fish. It then asks Did
I get it? And if not, it will ask what the
animal was. Suppose you had thought of
an elephant (answering No to the first
question). The program would then ask
How can I tell a horse from an elephant ?
you would supply a distinguishing ques-
tion, such as Does it have tusks? Then you
14 TPUG Magazine
would explain that, for the elephant, the
answer would be Yes.
The computer now knows about an
elephant, something that the program-
mer didn't tell it. As more questions are
asked, new animals will be added to the
knowledge base: birds, insects, dinosaurs.
Leave the program running in a class-
room for a day, and the computer will
know all the animals that the students
know . . . plus a few extra ones that were
just invented or misspelled. Leave it at
a computer show for a couple of days
(with a suitably -sized disk to catch all the
data) and you'll be amazed by the
menagerie that it collects: everything
from hobbits to Easter bunnies.
Here's the strange thing: the computer
ends up knowing more animals than any
single person . . . certainly more than the
programmer knew. It has assembled all
that knowledge into a massive database.
That's computer intelligence.
Again: if the program was given a large
number of 'possible strategies' for win-
ning at the game of checkers, that would
not make it a very good player. But let
that computer play lots of people — and
tell the computer that every time it loses
a game, it should mark the strategies it
has used as 'lower priority', and every
time it wins a game, it should mark the
strategies it has used as 'higher priority'.
After a while, the computer will play a
pretty good game of checkers. It has
learned, not from the programmer, but
from the people it has played.
That's the essence of AI. A computer
that can modify its behaviour based upon
its experience is a program that gets
smarter as it is used.
Perhaps the big payoff for artificial in-
telligence — at least one of the earliest
— is that of 'expert systems'. Get a group
of experts on a given subject — say,
medicine — to input their knowledge in
a certain area. Have a computer program
that's written well enough to link
together the elements of information in
an intelligent way (including the contra-
dictions, if any). Now you can have a com-
puter information base — an expert
system — that knows more than any one
person. It can change, expand and be cor-
rected as necessary, and will continue to
gather knowledge.
In a sense, I view the essence of arti-
ficial intelligence as the concept that a
program can become more knowledge-
able than its programmer. Which brings
to mind a new way to view the old prov-
erb: "Computers are dumber than
people... but smarter than
programmers
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January/February 1965 15
Expert System, Novice User
by Dave Powell
I'm not an expert on expert systems. I
suppose I know as much as many data
processing professionals or computer
hobbyists who read a variety of articles.
My conception has always been of a
system to which an expert could impart
knowledge so that a layman could avail
himself of it without special training. The
articles often cited medical knowledge as
an example. I imagined a doctor impar-
ting his or her expert knowledge by typ-
ing in 'patients who sneeze have a cold
or an allergy'; or 'normal temperature is
98.6 degrees Fahrenheit'; or 'red spots
are a symptom of measles'.
1 never really visualized the input pro-
cess, but I suppose I thought that it had
to be pretty simple, or maybe done by a
layman who was, however, expert in us-
ing the expert system. Somehow or other,
the system sorted out all the input and
worked out that 'red spots' were a skin
condition, and that 'measles' was a
disease. After the. (medical) expert in-
troduced a new word or phrase, I imagin-
ed the system checking back: '"Measles'
is a disease, right?" (on the grounds that
it had 'symptom of in front of it); "How
are these red spots different from acne?" ;
and so un. Statement, question and
answer, until the expert decided that the
system was sufficiently educated.
I also expected that the expert system
would keep growing, unless it was an in-
herently restricted set of knowledge, such
as a well -explored branch of mathematics.
It would require an easy way to add
knowledge on a continuing basis.
Along came XPER from Abacus Soft-
ware — an expert system that runs, not
on some million-dollar mainframe , but on
the Commodore 64, I thought I'd teach
it how to diagnose ailing garden plants.
Early on, I found out who had to
categorize and input the information —
me. I described several features by listing
them, using the supplied editor:
• Insects visible
• Leaves have holes
• Leaves have altered colour
• Type of plant
• Time of year
That's enough to give you the idea. Each
feature can have a maximum of fourteen
attributes. For example, the first one, In-
sects, had:
• Colonies of small insects
• Small pink insects, masses of white
'cotton'
• Green beetles
And so on. 'Leaves have holes' has at-
tributes that describe different shapes of
hole. (Time to own up: all of this expert
knowledge came from the 'Plant
Disorders' chapter in The Reader's Digest
Illustrated Guide to Gardening, which is
very nicely set up to convert to the form
XPER requires.)
Having set up features and attributes,
the objects came next. I chose to use the
name of the ailment as the object. Now
comes the expert bit — connecting the ob-
jects with the descriptions. Object by ob-
ject, I had to tell XPER which attributes
each feature has. For instance, I added
'aphids' as an object. For the 'insects'
feature, I chose Colonies of small Insects.
I chose none of the attributes for the
holes or altered colour features, 'all' for
Type of plant, and 'spring' and 'early
summer' for Time of year. Note that it's
possible to choose none or several of the
attributes for a given feature.
This part gets a bit tedious. In fact, I
cut down on the number of objects and
features that I was going to test, in order
to get it done. My expectations of the ex-
pert system were changing!
Now to use it. Before leaving the
editor, it's necessary to save the
knowledge base, as it's called. Then load
the inquiry' part via the main menu, and
reload the base.
Okay, let's say I've just come in from
the garden and my roses are looking a bit
sorry for themselves. I want to find out
what ails them. I can start with any
feature and choose which attribute(s)
describe what I've seen in the garden. A
good place to start is the Type of plant,
I'll choose both 'roses' and 'all'. XPER
tells me immediately how many objects
(ailments) I've eliminated, and how many
remain. I can list either set. For the
eliminated ones, I can ask why. Not much
use after one question — anything
eliminated was eliminated because it at-
tacks plants other than 'roses' or 'all'. If
I list Colorado Potato Beetle, I'll see that
the little beastie prefers eggplants, pep-
pers, tomatoes and white tomatoes.
On to another question. Let's say it's
early summer (don't I wish!): I can
answer Time of year. Possibly this ques-
tion doesn't distinguish between any re-
maining objects. In one mode — the
default — this question (feature) would
not even be listed (nice touch, that). Con-
tinuing, I choose Insects visible, and
answer Colonies of white insects. Aha!
says XPER. Aphids. (Actually, it says
'object found').
Suppose I suspected aphids in the first
place (even I can recognize aphids). I
could ask XPER to optimize the search
— for aphids. It will arrange the features
in the order that will select aphids (if
that's what I've got) in the least number
of questions. It will go straight to Insects
visible, and if I answer Colonies of white
insects, it will tell me 'aphids', because on-
ly aphids have the attribute Colonies of
white insects. Got the little beggars in
one. But I'd hate my doctor to diagnose
me with a single question.
When I tested my knowledge base, it
picked out the ailment my wife described
each time: but then, she was describing
the ailment from the same book that I'd
used to build the base. Like me, she
thought she'd rather have just used the
book in the first place. The book has pic-
tures — which is how it gets away with
the 'colonies of small insects' description.
Some observations
First, to build a base that would cover all
the ailments that I might expect to see
in my garden would take for ever, and
might be beyond the capacity of the
system. Secondly, it became obvious that
my first design was not too good . There
are too many possible plant types to fit
in fourteen attributes, and there should
be an 'umbrella' category ('symptoms',
maybe) above the first three features. In
an expanded knowledge base, there
would be far more symptoms.
There's a way to fix these two prob-
lems, but there seems to be a bug which
stops me. A father-son-connection
feature looks as if it should work like this:
initially, the feature 'plant type' would
contain attributes that were subsets:
vegetables, shrubs, trees, and so forth.
Picking 'shrub' would open up a new
feature, Shrubs, which in turn would have
individual shrub types (juniper, yew, et
cetera) as attributes. Irritatingly, even
the example in the manual led to a system'
reset every time I tried to define this.
Depending on what changes are neces-
16 TPUG Magazine
sary, a redesign could mean a great deal
of work, so continual testing is necessary,
and probably some initial thought before
even sitting down at the C-64.
How good is the product?
An early thought that entered my head
— this was merely an in-memory binary
database. Imagine a record for each ob-
ject. Each feature is a field, and each at-
tribute is a yes/no (1/0) byte, or even bit
in the field. Now, to select an object,
select all records that have a 1 in the right
place. Then on to the next question, and
do the selection only on the records
already selected. Having every record in
memory makes it fast.
This is a viable model of what is actually
happening, but forget any ideas of
emulating the process with database soft-
ware. The process would take too long
with a normal database, and making
changes would be prohibitively difficult.
XPER allows the base designer to add or
remove objects, features, attributes and
connections at any time (in the editor).
From a technical point of view, XPEE
is not so hot. I dislike the fact that swit-
ching from editor to inquirer takes so
long. It also needs a disk swap, which is
left up to the user. If one leaves the data
disk in when the system disk should be
there, there are circumstances where the
program just does a cold restart. There
doesn't seem to be much in the way of
disk error checking. A save could fail —
write-proteet on, say — and no message
would be given. In other cases, when an
error message is given, it flashes on for
one and a half seconds only. There is no
facility for getting a directory of
knowledge bases from the data disk —
one has to get a directory before loading
XPER.
There is an unusual mixture of menus
and commands. Help 'screens' are a cryp-
tic one or two line list of available com-
mands. Okay for experts, but it sends
beginners back to the manual. Strangely
enough, it seems to work well once a
familiarity is obtained. The function key
arrangement works well, too.
Other C-64 features are not so well-
used. The standard 'use the F keys to
change the colours' option is available at
the main menu, (with the keys mislabell-
ed!), but then colour is avoided. Good use
could have been made of colour in screens
where the list of attributes is shown. The
attribute selected by the user is in
reverse, the one for the object just
eliminated is shown with a 'dollar' sign
in front of it. Why not use a different col-
our? There's no sound at all — better than
programs that beep at every key, but a
well -placed beep is a "useful way to alert
the user to mistakes. It also ignores
capitals (even though they are used in the
manual's examples), and some punctua-
tion marks.
Lastly, XPER is not crash-proof. Many
user errors or product bugs lead to a
system reset. This can be particularly
upsetting when the last hour's work has
not been saved.
The manual is fine, as far as it goes, but
gives no hint of why one would want to
use the package. There is a pretty good
example to follow, but there are occa-
sional page-long passages of keystrokes
that have to be entered correctly, or the
example following will fail. (It failed for
me a couple of times before I got it right.)
There is a reference section, arranged by-
screen. Each screen has a four -character
ID, which is not used by the system, as
far as I can see, so why not spell out the
function in full? The manual does have
some good cross reference sections in the
appendices, although some page
references are wrong.
Conclusion
As a sophisticated software product,
XPER doesn't do anything for me. As an
expert system generator, it's really in-
teresting — great for experimenting with
abstract concepts such as the nature of
information. It allows information about
a fairly small body of knowledge to be
stored, dissected and used. Pioneering a
new technology is never easy, and XPER
is a brave attempt. I'd like to see some
technical improvements and, if possible,
a larger capacity. Hopefully, later ver-
sions won't have the bug I encountered
or, if it was my fault, will have a better
explanation of how to do what I want.
For the person who wants to experi-
ment with the concept of expert systems,
the flaws will seem trivial and the poten-
tial great. As for my gardening problems,
I'll stick to the book! (It occurs to me that
an expert system becomes an improve-
ment over text books at the point where
more than one text needs to be referenc-
ed — it's a good way to consolidate the
information.)
Finally, I suspect that the future of pro-
ducts like XPER will hinge upon the
availability of commercially-compiled
knowledge bases. Then I might be able
to buy a diskette with a Gardening Prob-
lems base ready-made!
XPER Knowledge Base Management
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Software, FO Box 7211, Grand Rapids,
Michigan 45910. $59.95 (US). Q
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January/February 1985 17
Amiga Dispatches
by Tim Grantham
The best thing about the amazing Amiga
is not its multitasking or its digital sound
synthesis or even its hi-res colour
graphics. The best thing about the Amiga
is that it has brought some excitement
back into the personal computer scene.
Consumers pester their dealers for the
latest software releases. Dealers hotly
debate the cost effectiveness of the Atari
ST versus the Amiga. Modems are smok-
ing as software developers stay up to the
wee hours of the morning trading tips on
the latest versions of C compilers. Pro-
grammers haven't had this kind of gleam
in their eyes since Jack Tramiel sprang
the Commodore 64 on an industry that
has since grown moribund with the suf-
focating dominance of IBM. It is great to
see that Commodore has stuck to its
tradition of innovation. Whether the
Amiga gets the sales it deserves remains
to be seen. Meanwhile, the latest news
from the Front:
Copy Protection
For a time, the hottest topic of debate on
CompuServe's Amigaforum was the issue
of copy protection (CP) on Amiga com-
mercial software. Electronic Arts, the in-
dependent software developer with pro-
bably the greatest commitment to the
Amiga, invited members to get their feel-
ings about CP out in the open. They
responded enthusiastically. The following
is just one example (edited):
#: 2093 S1 /Software
17-Dec-85 11:45:37
Sb: #Open Systems & Software
Fm: William Volk(Aegis Devel 72257.2566
To: ALL
... but needless to say, we feel that copy
protection has no place on a professional
multi-tasking computer. This doesn't just
apply to productivity and utility software
. . . why shouldn't a user be allowed to
play an adventure game while their spread-
sheet is printing? (or their program is com-
piling). If the Amiga doesn't have open sod-
ware ... the whole point of the multi-
tasking will be lost and the computer will
have lost a real feature over other 68000
based systems. I want to stir up a little
debate here. . . Let's hear it (or "OPEN
SYSTEMS AND OPEN SOFTWARE!!!"
Copy protection on Amiga software
means, of course, it is usually impossible
to install the program onto a hard disk.
For many, an Amiga without a hard disk
is like a juggler on tranquillizers —
nothing's dropped but nothing flies! Elec-
tronic Arts also installs a custom OS on
some of their games especially as a means
of copy protection; but this also effective-
ly short-circuits AmigaDOS's multitask-
ing. Electronic Arts responded with:
#: 2155 S1 /Software
17-Dec-85 22:29:00
Sb: #2132-#Electronic Arts & CP
Fm: Electronic Arts 76004,237
To: GARY SARFF 70167,2216 (X)
Actually, only a few of our programs will
"take over the systems', and they are all
games. We try as hard as possible to play
fair and share and, once we understand
the system better, we'll probably do a bet-
ter job. Unfortunately, many of our initial
releases had to be developed while only
the more primitive features of the OS were
ready and bug-free, so they were not at as
high a level of system interface as they
could have been ... We do realize the ad-
vantages of the multitasking, but Speed
Demons who need the performance don't
want to have an OS taking its time to
decide who gets to use the system. Again,
really just the games which don't create
files, use outside data, etc.
JJ - EA
Some-one in a back room at Electronic
Arts suggested one unorthodox means of
CP: a registered purchaser could return
their copy to EA, where it would be
deprotected and their credit card number
written into the start-up screen. That
software would never get out of the safe-
deposit box! After some more thrust-and-
parry, EA's last word was:
#: 4811 31 /Software
10-Jan-86 18:14:04
Sb: #4741 -Copy Protection
Fm: Electronic Arts 76004.237
To: George Gregori 72256,3204 (X)
We always have and probably always will
protect our games. I have yet to hear a
valid argument against that. Our utility pro-
grams, especially the Deluxe series, are
being released protected for now. How-
ever, we are doing lots of research into
alternative methods, and are packaging
our next release of DPaint with two copies
already, plus the ability to purchase more
backups. Some of our alternative methods
include: starting the program by display-
ing a black & white digitized picture of the'
package cover, and having the user tel! the
program what color a particular object on
the package is; (2) Having a special phone-
order for non-protected disks and having
that user's copy programmed to display his
Visa/MC card § upon bootup; (3) Having
two separate versions, mass market (cheap
and protected) and specialty (expensive
and non- protected).
Any other suggestions for alternative pro-
tection are greatly appreciated. Please
don't ask us to trust all of you completely.
We've been burnt too often by pirates in
the past. But we're trying.
JJ - EA
Hardware News
On the hardware front, considerable in-
terest was stirred with the revelation that
vl.l of AmigaDOS is compatible with
other processors in the 68xxx series. It
seems you can switch the 68000 CPU in
your Amiga with a 68010 and get a 5-10%
improvement in speed, although it may
actually be slower in interrupt-intensive
applications. At Computer Systems
Associates, a 68020/68881 board of their
design was plugged into the 68000's
socket and apparently promptly tripled
the Amiga's speed! (The 68881 is a
floating-point co-processor.) This kind of
warp-drive doesn't come cheap, though.
The bare board alone is $595 (US), and
the complete board, with both processors
and 256K of static RAM, weighs in at a
hefty $1500 (US), more than the purchase
price of the Amiga. Still, such a board
could really power future CAD/CAM ap-
plications at a reasonable price.
Other hardware news. . . Tec mar has
raised the prices for their Amiga
peripherals ($2000 US for their 20 Mbyte
hard-drive) but claim these reflect the in-
clusion of 'extras* like cables, power sup-
plies, etc . . . Two versions of the Amiga
RGB-analog monitor have appeared, the
1070 and the 1080. Rick Sterling of Micro
Technic Solutions reports the 1070 to be
far superior 1 letter resolution, better col-
our saturation, a longer persistence
phosphor that reduces flicker in'the in-
terlaced hi-res mode. Some are opting in-
stead for other monitors, such as the
18 TPUG Magazine
SONY KV-1311cr, and kludging an adap-
tor. . . Latest versions of the graphics
chips have added a 'half-bright' mode,
enabling 64 colours in the medium-res
mode. . . The digital synthesizer in the
Amiga has a theoretical top frequency
response of 14 KHz, close to hi-fidelity.
Most music software though, changes the
sampling rate to change the pitch of the
note, effectively limiting the top notes to
7 khz. In addition, there is a hardware
filter at the output (which is possible to
remove) that cuts out sound above the 7
KHz limit. . . Larry Miller of FAUG has
posted some info from Electronic Arts:
"ARCHON works with the joystick in the
second mouse/joystick port. Seven Cities
of Gold requires that you remove the
mouse and plug your joystick into the
first mouse/joystick plug."
Finally, because Amiga disk drives do
not have their DOS on-board (unlike
previous Commodore drives, such as the
1541), hackers are busy adapting generic
(read 'cheaper') 3 1/2-inch and 5 1/4-inch
drives. One experimenter known only as
'Jay' claims, "Drives for the Amiga must
be able to do two things most (the ones
I looked at anyway) drives do not: 1) They
must be able to send 'Disk Changed'; 2)
They must be able to latch the 'Motor'
signal." Brian Niessen, one of TPUG's
Amiga experts on the TPUG Forums on
CompuServe, has confirmed this, having
seen a generic 3 1/2-inch drive working
with an Amiga. This means that those of
you handy with a soldering gun can add
your own external drive for less than
$200. Film at eleven.
Software News
Turning to the latest action in soft-
ware... The Transformer IBM PC
Emulation software is scheduled for
release January 15, 1986. Beta-test ver-
sions work well with various versions of
MS-DOS, including the Kaypro DOS
2000, which can use 3 1/2-inch drives.
Test versions worked with IBM-
compatible printers. Lotus 1-2-3, Sym-
phony and Framework run as touted, as
does PC Crosstalk, Panasonic's
GWBASIC, and WordStar 2000, though
the latter is very slow. Improvements are
expected in the release version . . .
Manx's Aztec C compiler is currently in
beta test. William Volk of Aegis reports
that Aegis Draw runs ten times faster
when compiled with Aztec. Aegis Draw
was originally written with the Lattice C
compiler. He says that not only do the
floating-point routines run up to 20 times
faster, but compile time was five times
faster, and the object code was almost
half the size... Synapse Software is
rumoured to be coming out with an
Amiga version of its powerful SynCalc
spreadsheet sometime in February. It's
to be called CalCraft. . . Chang Labs'
Rags to Riches accounting software is
being dubbed 'Lameware' by some
because — powerful though it is — it ap-
parently doesn't make use of any of the
Amiga's special features: no windows, no
mouse-control, no multitasking. Check
before you buy, as they say. . . EA's
Deluxe Paint is getting rave reviews, not
only for its features, but for EA's quick
release of upgrades. It looks like the in-
dustry will adopt the IFF format
developed by EA for graphic files, mak-
ing insertion of graphics into word pro-
cessors a reality. DPaint and Island
Graphics' Graphicraft can exchange files
in their latest incarnations . . .
The word from Commodore-Amiga is
that AmigaDOS will not be put into ROM
— the Writable Control Store stays. This
makes upgrading to new versions much
easier. 30,000-plus upgrade kits contain-
ing vl.l of KickStart and WorkBench,
and AmigaBasic by Micro Soft, have
already been shipped, indicating strong
initial sales. . . By the way, if you've
bought v 1.0 of Micro-Systems Software's
well-received ONLINE terminal soft-
ware, get the free upgrade to vl.l —
seems the VT100 and VT52 emulations
don't work on vl.O because the wrong
files were linked during the compilation
process. . . Bob Perez is working on an
Amiga version of his remarkable VMCO
terminal program (see COMPUTE!,
January 1985). It's going to have all the
features he wanted to have on the Mac-
intosh version and couldn't. . . The Unix-
like operating system OS/9 is being
ported to the Amiga and the Atari ST —
it should be available this year . . . E A has
announced that they expect to release
Skyfox in January, Arctic Fox in
February, Adventure Construction Set
and Deluxe Print in March, and Video
Construction Set in April or May. . .
Aegis Development will soon be releasing
a full line of art/CAD software, all the
way from Aegis Draw at $199.99 US to
Aegis Pro Draw, a professional CAD
program with everything AutoCAD has,
plus anything else they can think of, for
less than a $1000.00 US. It will make full
use (memory permitting) of AmigaDOS
multitasking. You'll be able to dump to
printer/plotter or telecommunicate while
working on your masterpiece ....
AmigaDOS Revisions
There has been some grumbling about the
slowness of AmigaDOS. Carl Sassenrath,
the man responsible for the specifications
for the original Amiga DOS, says Com-
modore decided instead to buy a 'mature'
DOS from Metacomco, sacrificing some
efficiency for quicker software develop-
ment. The following information about
the next incarnation of AmigaDOS was
posted by Jim Meyers on CompuServe:
The 'mythical 1.2', if and when it is releas-
ed, will fix a number of bugs in 1 .0 and 1.1,
some of which were just caught. Most have
to do with the functioning of gadgets. This
stuff comes from R.J. Mical, as captured
from BIX.
• There's a problem with the locking pro-
tocol between Intuition and the Graphics
Library: highlighted gadgets are not
redrawn properly, and rapid clicking on
gadgets will leave them inverted.
• MutualExclude of gadgets does not
work yet, but will in 1 .2
• System activation of gadgets will be
allowed for (but not windows!).
• Simple columnar text-only menu items
might be added.
• RawKey and SelectDown don't work
now during an active requester. This will
change.
• There is a bug in the calculation of cur-
sor position within the container of a prop
gadget which has (just) been corrected.
Please bear in mind that after sharing all
this info with us and referring to fixes in 1 .2,
R.J. then said that 1.2 was strictly a
mythical product with no release date nor
guarantee of release. I presume that Amiga
folk have to say things like that to keep peo-
ple from waiting for the next release of In-
tuition before writing software, or to protect
the company in case the release never
happens. All in all, 1.2 sounds to me like
a certainty, and some unknown portion of
it is already done. I do know that some
things which might have made it into 1.1
didn't, because there was a firm 'freeze'
date for it.
Jim Meyer
People to look out for on the CompuServe
forums: William Volk (Aegis Develop-
ment), Sheldon Leemon (author of Map-
ping the Commodore fi4), Carl Sassenrath
(former Amiga designer), Paul Higginbot-
tom (Amiga Product Manager), Michael
Reich mann (Batteries Included), Bruce
Webster (BYTE magazine), Bob Perez
(VMCO), Russ Wetmore (HomePak),
Micro Technic Solutions, Electronic Arts,
and Micro-Systems Software. And last,
but not least, Brian Niessen and Roy Red-
dy, our Amiga specialists on the TPUG
Forums (pcs-116,-156,-155). □
January /February 1985 19
The Electronic Cottage
by Ian A. Wright
Copyright ® 1985, Ian A. Wright
Online databases make the wide world of
electronic information available without
great expenditures on equipment, and
without specialized training. Using per-
sonal computers like the C-64, and public
database networks like The Source, one-
person service businesses can operate out
of homes, with truly amazing sophistica-
tion. Home computer operators can have
just as much access to information as the
largest company — and this opens up the
possibility of employment via the 'elec-
tronic cottage'.
The electronic cottage is the concept of
'networking' computer terminals so that
you can do most (if not all) of your work
at home, rather than 'going to work*. This
kind of job is suitable for many service
or 'tertiary' workers like those who work
in sales, finance, data management, or
similar kinds of activities. Jobs where
direct and personal contact is not re-
quired are obvious choices for the elec-
tronic cottage.
New Jobs
Imagine working at home while providing
data services to others. Online materia!
is there, if you know where to look, if you
have time to look for it, and if you can
manipulate the raw data. Many man-
agers, however, do not have the requisite
expertise. Sales managers, for instance,
need up-to-date information about trends,
and to obtain this, they need current data
— often on short notice. A database
researcher could contract to provide this
kind of material over the telephone lines
without leaving home. In fact, one of my
ex-students has formed his own company
to do inventory control under contract to
a local firm, to help pay his schooling
expenses.
Using systems like Datapac, iNet 2000
and Envoy 100, home workers could be
responsible for running an advertising
campaign, operating a mailing service, or
coordinating a sales drive. It is possible
today. Canadian communication tech-
nology equals or surpasses that of the rest
of the world — the videotex system called
Telidon and the Canadian satellite com-
munications systems are but two ex-
amples — so there is a high-tech infra-
structure in place. Instant information ac-
cess and rapid communication are
necessary parts of today's business activ-
ities — but the huge office building is
redundant.
Networking
You don't have to leave the corporate
structure to work at home. LANs (Local
Area Networks) are based on plugging
the limited memory and function of the
home computer into the telephone, and
using the power of mainframe and mini
computers from a remote terminal. Any
authorized employee can have access to
central files from miles away, to process
data rapidly and accurately at home.
Similarly, a sales manager can keep track
of his staff by calling their computer link.
Rather than rounds of endless meetings,
colleagues can set up a computer con-
ference through a LAN and use the net-
work to call up reference material such
as graphs and charts, while all comments
on proposals are automatically recorded.
The key is that this could take place over
a few days, rather than tying everyone
to one conference table or one conference
call. All this is possible through the magic
of networking.
Some of the larger companies, such as
McDonald's, are already allowing some
of their staff to work at home through
electronic links, and the potential of this
kind of employment is enormous. The
company doesn't need to invest in a huge
corporate building that stands empty
while still consuming much-needed
resources for almost two thirds of the
day. Companies lose millions of dollars
through tardiness and illness; much of
this could be cut out by the electronic cot-
tage. Managers don't play 'telephone tag'
with their clients, because text messages
can be left in an electronic 'mailbox'.
There's less worry about garbled
messages, too, since order messages can
be saved as part of a client's file.
Employees gain new tax claims — part
of their rent for workspace, some capital
costs for equipment and incidental ex-
penses, for example. They no longer need
to have a company car or pay daily public
transportation costs out of their salaries.
Commuting time would be negligible,
since there would be only monthly staff
meetings and the work week would be
spread over seven 24-hour days. No need
for mental health days, either — flexible
holidays! Child-care expenses can be
reduced or cut out entirely, and you won't
need those sick days for junior's illness.
Office clothing costs can be slashed,
because no one cares what clothes you
work in at home — as long as you are pro-
ductive. The savings are tremendous, and
the expenses are not.
The greatest benefit will probably come
from the return to the old concept of the
working family. Father (and/or mother)
no longer disappears for eight to ten
hours each morning to some unknown
and unpleasant place called 'work', to
return tired and irritable at the end of the
day. The implementation of the electronic
cottage will require us to rethink some of
the existing structures of our society and
review existing roles in the family. Fami-
ly life was not fragmented until after the
industrial revolution — maybe the com-
puter revolution will allow us to return
to saner times. □
20 TPUG Magazine
Punter BBS Commands
Message Numbers and Reference Numbers
Each message has two numbers associated with it: a Message
Number and a Reference Number. The Message Number is the
message's current position in the stack of active messages. It
is this number you will work with most often. Unlike the Message
Number, which changes every time a message is deleted, the
Reference Number is unique to each message, and is used to
allow you refer back to an old message, regardless of where it
may end up in the stack.
There are other uses of this reference that you will soon learn
about.
Message Parameters
You will note that, in the Help List (obtained by typing HELP
at the Command > prompt), some commands have asterisks
(*) beside them, while others have number symbols (#) beside
them. This indicates that the command can or must have a
Message Parameter applied to it (#=MUST; * =CAN, but not
needed).
Those with a + beside them have a special syntax that is
discussed under the SCN and SEL commands.
If you want to enter a command without a Message
Parameter, simply enter it and press RETURN.
If you do want to enter a Message Parameter — or have to
— you have two choices: by Message Number, or by Reference
Number. To enter a Message Number, simply follow the com-
mand with that number. For example: DM25. To enter a
Reference Number, follow the command with a dash, then the
reference number. For example: F-1286. If the Reference
Number cannot be found, you will be told No Reference, then
the closest message to this reference will be used (except in some
cases, which will be discussed individually).
Pause and Abort
At any time, you can stop the transmission by pressing the S
(for 'stop') key. As soon as the current line is finished, the
transmission will stop. To start it again, simply press the C (for
'continue') key once. Additionally, most functions allow abor-
tion by hitting the A key instead of C. This S to stop, A to abort
sequence can also be accomplished by sending a CTRL-A. In what
follows, this sequence will be referred to as the Abort Sequence.
Utter Abort
During any transmission you may return to Command > (or
some other places, to be discussed separately) by sending a
CTRL-P. This sequence will be referred to here as the Utter
Abort.
Message Forwarding
Any public message addressed to you can be forwarded to
another user, ALL, SYSOP or SUGGESTION BOX.
Forwarding is done right after reading the message in ques-
tion. Those functions from which forwarding can be accomp-
lished are: READ, MAIL, RALL, F#, R#, R, NEW and SEL.
If you are in the R (Recall a Specific Message) function, and the
prompt says:
(1 - XXX) <H>elp - Message?
Type F < RETURN > . If you are in any of the other functions
and the prompt says:
<R>eply <F>orward <H>elp — More?
Press F. You will now be asked:
Forwarded Msg To
>
Your options are identical to those when sending a message with
E (Enter a Message). Once a valid name is entered, the new
header will be printed. Note: This is a totally new message,
separate from the original, but with the old Subject and Text.
Also note that your name appears in the From line, but with
(FWD) after it to indicate this is a forwarded message.
After the message is forwarded, you will be returned to the
prompt from which you came.
Replying to a Message
Any message can be replied to directly after reading. Those func-
tions from which reply can be accomplished are: READ, MAIL,
RALL, F#, R#, R, NEW and SEL.
If you are in the R (Recall a Specific Message) function, and the
prompt says:
(1 - XXX) <H>elp - Message?
Type R < RETURN > . If you are in any of the other functions
and the prompt says:
<R>eply <F> onward <H>elp — More?
Press R. You will now be asked:
Subject of Message?
>
Enter your subject for the message and press RETURN. No
prompt for a recipient will be seen, since that information is
already known. Now enter your message in the same fashion
as you would have had you used the E command.
Lost Message Recovery
It is possible for you to lose your carrier, causing you to fall off-
line. Under most circumstances, this is no great loss — simply
call back. But, if entering a long message, that data could be
lost for ever.
Fortunately, in BBS64.3, if you do fall off-line while working
on a message, that message is saved to a special file under your
name and a flag is set in your user file to say that there is a
lost message pending. When you next sign on, the system will
recover the message, put you back in the message editor, and
let you complete your interrupted message.
B — Bulletin Section
The Bulletin Section is the place where SEQ files are put for
you to read. When entered, you will see the title 'Bulletin Sec-
tion', followed by a listing of available bulletins, or what you
should type to find the bulletin you want to read. If you are in
Expert Mode, you will not see this list: type HELP, H or ? to
get it.
The main prompt for this section looks like this:
Bulletin >
January/February 1985 21
At this point, you should enter the name of the item you wish
to see. If you enter a name that does not exist, the following
error message will appear:
Bulletin Not Found
Most SYSOPs will put Stop Points in the files so that you never
have to worry about the data scrolling off your screen before
you read it.
Although it is possible to stop the printing by pressing S, then
continue by pressing C, the Stop Points make life easier. Stop
Point prompts look like this:
Continue?
This is a yes/no question: Y or RETURN for 'yes', N for 'no'.
If you answer 'no', you will be returned to the main bulletin
prompt.
To exit the Bulletin Section, simply press RETURN without
entering anything when the Bulletin > prompt is on the screen.
The Abort Sequence and Utter Abort will both return you to
the Bulletin > prompt.
Note : Stop points will not stop text scrolling if you ar e in Con-
tinuous Mode; they will just cause a blank line to be printed,
CAT — List Message Categories
This command simply lists the available Message Categories,
which are used only in conjuction with the SEL and SCN
functions.
CONT — Continuous Mode Toggle
This function is used in conjunction with the Bulletin Section
and message reading. CONT is a toggle function: each time you
enter it, the mode is either switched on or off, depending upon
whether it was on or off in the first place. To use this toggle,
simply type CONT < RETURN > .
The display will show either: Continuous Mode or Non-
Continuous Mode, depending on the state of the toggle.
When continuous mode is set, the Stop Points in the Bulletin
files will be ignored. This is useful if you are spooling the bulletins
onto a disk file for later printing and don't want a lot of Con-
tinue?s all over your print-out.
When reading messages, the <R>eply <F>orward
< H >elp — More? prompt will not appear unless the message
just read was addressed to you. Having the prompt appear in
this case ensures that you will always be given an opportunity
to Reply to your own messages. The only way of returning to
Command > during Continuous Message Reading is to send
CTRL-P (Utter Abort). The Abort Sequence will merely stop out-
put of the current message and move on to the next.
When you sign off, this mode will be saved in your user file:
its state will be re-established automatically when you next sign
on.
DM — Delete Message
This function allows you to delete any message sent to or from-
you. Other messages cannot be deleted by you. Although at sign-
off you are given the option of having all messages sent to you
deleted, it is still possible to delete selected ones with DM, as
well as messages you sent to others that you no longer wish to
have on the system.
This function requires a Message Parameter. References must
be found, otherwise you will be prompted for another Message
Parameter. If no Message Parameter is given, you will be im-
mediately prompted for one. That prompt looks like this:
To
: ALL
Posted
: 1327h on 13-Mar-85
Subject
: A Sample Deletion
Correct?
Msg #
From
25 - Ref 13008
STEVE PUNTER
If you answer 'no' to this question, you will be returned to the
Message > prompt (where you will be taken back to Command
>, if you simply press RETURN). If you say 'yes', one of two
things will happen: if this isn't one of your messages, you will
be told so; otherwise, the following message will be seen:
Message Tagged For Deletion
This means exactly what it says. The message has not yet been
removed from the system — it has simply been tagged for
removal after you sign off. This process is used to save disk usage
and user on-time (especially for long-distance callers).
DP — Delete Program
If you wish to delete a program on the download section of the
board, you must know its Deletion Code. This code was given
to the program by the person who uploaded it. Under normal
circumstances, this limits the people capable of deleting a pro-
gram to its sender (and the SYSOP), but the sender may tell
another user the Deletion Code via a Private Message (if his or
her Security Level allows Private Messages). Type DP
< RETURN >, or DP# < RETURN >. You will prompted with:
Name of File?
>
Enter the full name of the file and press RETURN. It will take
a few seconds for the BBS to search the directory for the file
and then either tell you the file doesn't exist, or show one of
the following, things. If the program wasn't given a Deletion
Code;
Deletion Restricted
If there is a Deletion Code:
Deletion Code?
Enter the code, then RETURN. If the code is incorrect, you will
be told so and returned to Command (S:0) >. If the code is
correct, the program will be deleted (which will take from two
to thirty seconds, or so).
DUP — Duplex
Normally, the BBS works on FULL DUPLEX, which means each
character it receives from the user is echoed back to the user.
This is the most desirable arrangement, since it lets the user
verify that his or her typed characters are getting to the board
correctly.
Under some conditions, FULL DUPLEX is impractical, and
HALF DUPLEX must be used (no character echo). DUPLEX may
be toggled from FULL to HALF, using the DUP command. Type
DUP < RETURN > and you will see: Half Duplex or Full Duplex.
E — Enter a Message
This function is accessed either through a direct command at
the Command > prompt, or via the Reply feature of the
message-reading functions. This is a very flexible function, as
you will soon discover. Before using it, it is wise to fully unders-
tand the method by which messages are entered.
Most boards simply have you type in as much on a line as you
like (up to about 40 or 80 characters, usually); then press
RETURN, in order to decide on the format of each line. BBS64
lets you enter, then justify, your messages, much the same as
Steve Punter's WordPro 64 word processor does.
22 TPUG Magazine
As you enter your message, it will go onto the screen as ex-
pected, but once you reach the 31st character, a RETURN will
automatically be generated, causing your cursor to drop to the
beginning of the next line . Do not let this bother you, just con-
tinue typing until you get to the end of your paragraph. Then
— and only then — press RETURN.
To leave a blank line between paragraphs, do not simply press
RETURN, as this is the indicator that your message is complete.
Press SPACE, then RETURN.
As mentioned above, once the message is complete, press
RETURN on a blank line.
To actually begin entry of a message: type E < RETURN >
at the Command > prompt; press R at the <R>eply <F>or-
ward < H >elp — More? prompt; or R < RETURN > , from the
{1 — XXX) <H>elp — Message? prompt. You will be asked:
Subject Of Message?
>
Using upper and lower case, type in a subject for this message .
The system will only allow you to enter 29 characters, at which
point it will just stop accepting characters (except DEL and
RETURN, of course).
Entering only a RETURN will abort the function.
If this function was started from Command > , you will now
be asked:
Send Msg To
>
The reply feature doesn't give this prompt because it already
knows to whom the message is to be sent. You have four choices
for answers here:
1. A valid user's name. A check of the user file will be made
to make sure the name entered is valid.
2. ALL, followed by any extra material you like (for example:
ALL BBS'ERS, or ALL COMPUTER NUTS).
3. SYSOP, which means System Operator.
4. SUGGESTION BOX
Once one of the above is entered, the header of the message
will be generated and displayed:
Msg # : 82 — Ref 13100
From : SYSOP
To : JOE USER
Posted : 1351 h on 13-Feb-85
Subject : A Sample Message
If this message is not to ALL, and your Security Level allows
Private Messages, you will be prompted with:
Private Message?
Press Y or N, depending upon what type of message you wish
to send. If you answer 'no', or the message is to ALL, you will
be prompted with:
Category (H = Help) >
For a list of available Message Categories, press the H key,
otherwise, press the numeric key corresponding to the desired
category for this message. Categories are not printed when a
user reads the message, but are used in the SCN and SEL func-
tions to aid in the selection of desired reading material.
You may now start typing your message (according to the
rules laid out previously). You have a maximum of 41 lines on
which to enter the message, but it can be as long as you tike.
This is accomplished by appending multiple message parts
together on disk. If you exceed the 41-line limit, the following
will be printed:
No More Space Left!
If that happens, or you end the message normally (by pressing
only RETURN on a blank line), it will be formatted and displayed
for you. It is formatted to a 38-character line with justification!
Once formatting is complete, you will see:
Option:
Send Insert Format
List Delete Continue
Edit Abort Paragraph
Search and Replace:
R/[searchl/[replace]/[line #]
>
You have now entered the very powerful Message Editor. For
more information on this editor, see the section on that topic
elsewhere in this documentation.
If you want to extend your message beyond its current length,
you can. First edit what you have already entered, using the
Message Editor, but don't worry about the incomplete paragraph
at the 41st line; just leave that alone. Send the message by
typing:
S < RETURN >
When the board prompts you with:
Continue Message After Writing?
answer by pressing Y. The board will automatically find the end
of the last complete paragraph and format that to the disk. You
will be informed of how much is going to disk by the following
message:
Formatting to Line XX
Once the board has finished sending this to disk, it will return
and say:
Continue Msg. . .
It will then print out the unformatted lines that make up the
still-incomplete paragraph (if any). Continue entering your
message as though nothing ever happened. You may repeat this
procedure as many times as you like, thus making messages of
unlimited size!
EXP — Expert Mode
Expert mode is entered once you have become accustomed to
the BBS and how it works. After entering Expert Mode, many
of the wordy explanations at the beginning of functions, as well
as long option lists, are no longer printed (though all option lists
are always available by typing H, HELP or ?, then RETURN).
To enter Expert Mode , type EXP < RETURN > . You will see:
Expert Mode On
You only have to enter Expert Mode once. When you call the
function, a flag in your name on the user file will changed so
that next time you sign on, you will automatically be in Expert
Mode.
If, for some reason, you want to come out of Expert Mode,
just type EXP < RETURN > again.
G — Goodbye
This function allows you to sign off the system. Once you have
typed G < RETURN >, you will be prompted with:
QUIT, Are You Sure?
If you accidentally typed G, and didn't mean to quit the system,
you can say NO here, and return safely to Command > . If you
say YES, and there were messages addressed to you, the follow-
ing will appear:
There were xx messages sent to you,
January/February 1985 23
Do you want them deleted now?
Normally, it is good practice to say YES, since it means you
won't leave messages you have already read cluttering up the
system. The only time you should say NO is if your sign-on had
to be cut short because of line noise, other more pressing mat-
ters, et cetera.
You will now be shown how long you were on-line, and then
disconnected:
Sign Off At 1428h
Connect Time = 0:25:14
LF — Line Feeds
Line Feeds are sent after RETURNS by default, but if your ter-
minal is double spacing, you won't want any.
Line Feeds can be toggled on and off by this function. Type
LF < RETURN > and you will see either: Line Feeds OFF or:
Line Feeds ON.
LOG — System Usage Log
Every time you sign off, your name is stored in a file, along with
sign-on and sign-off times, which you can read by typing LOG
< RETURN >. The Log will appear like this:
Starts on: 10-Mar-85
User
SYSOP
STEVE PUNTER
JOE USER
Sign-On/Off
1125h — 1148h
1235h — 131 Oh
1315h — 1332h
The SYSOP will usually choose to keep the log shortened to a
24-hour period so that it doesn't take you a long time to read
all of it. Should the log pass through midnight, a date stamp
will be applied to it. For example:
Starts on: 10-Mar-85
User
SYSOP
MORRIS BLACK
11-Mar-85
STEVE PUNTER
JOE USER
JANE SMITH
Sign-On/Off
2325h — 2348h
2352h — 0001 h
0035h — 011 Oh
0115h — 0132h
0135h — 0201 h
MINE — List Messages Sent by You
This function gives you a list of message numbers and subjects
of all the messages that you have sent that are still on the
system. Type MINE < RETURN >, and you will be presented
with a list something like this:
Msg# Subject
14 One of My Messages
67 Here is another from me
If this command is followed by a Message Parameter, the listing
will start from that message.
NEW — Read New Messages
Every time you sign off, the next reference number is stored,
along with your name. Armed with this information, it isn't hard
for the BBS to find the first message on the system that you
haven't read yet.
Type NEW < RETURN >, and the BBS will start a binary
search for this first unread message. Once found, the function
will continue exactly as the F command. If no new messages
have been sent (or if they are all private and you aren't allowed
to read them), the BBS will return to the Command > prompt.
NEXT — Continue Message Reading
At any time, you can stop a message reading function by say-
ing No to <R>eply <F>orward <H>elp — More?. Once
stopped, you can do anything you like (for example, send an
answering message, check the log, download a program), then
pick up where you left off! To do so, just type NEXT
< RETURN >.
O — Overview of Messages
If you wish to quickly see who is sending and receiving the
messages on the system, Overview will accommodate you.
Messages are read in the reverse direction (most to least re-
cent). Typing O < RETURN > will start you from the very most
recent, while typing O followed by a parameter (for example:
025, 0-1598) will start you from that specific message.
The Overview will look something like this:
Msg #
From
To
Subject
Msg#
From
To
Subject
et cetera
55 — Ret 412
SYSOP
JOE USER
Just a Test
54 — Ref 409
STEVE PUNTER
JANE DOE
Pretty Common Name Eh?
QUIT — Sign Off System
This function is exactly the same as G but, because it is next
to impossible to type QUIT by accident, no verification prompt
is given.
R — Recall a Specific Message
Messages may be recalled individually by either their Message
Number, or Reference Number. To enter this function, type R
< RETURN >. You will see the following prompt:
(1 — XXX) <H>elp — Message?
XXX is the current number of messages on the system. If you
wish to recall a message by its Message Number, simply type
in that number, then press RETURN. If you wish to recall a
message by its Reference Number, put a minus sign before the
reference (for example: -12412).
It will take slightly longer for a Reference Number Recall,
since a binary search of the existing messages has to be under-
taken to find your reference. If the reference given does not
exist, you will see:
No Reference
The Abort Sequence will return you to (1 — XXX) < H >elp —
Message?, while Utter Abort will return you to Command >.
R — Reverse Message Reading
This function is identical to Forward Message Reading in every
way — except that the messages are read in the reverse direc-
tion instead of forwards. Examples: R77, R-2300.
RALL — Read Messages Sent To ALL
This function works like the F command, but shows just the
messages addressed to all (broadcast messages). You may work
this function in two ways: By using it without a message
parameter, in which case it starts from the same place as the
NEW command; or with a message parameter, in which case
it will start from that specific message. RALL can be aborted
24 TPUG Magazine
and then picked up again, using the NEXT command.
Examples: RALL, RALL55, RALL-2493.
READ — Read Messages Sent To YOU
If the system has reported that you have messages waiting for
you, and you wish to read only them, type READ < RETURN > ,
As with NEW, you can stop this function at any time to answer
a message (or whatever), then pick up where you left off by typ-
ing NEXT < RETURN >.
MAIL — Read Messages Sent To YOU
This function is exactly the same as READ (see above).
S — Summary of Available Messages
This command will give you a list of all available messages, show-
ing only their Message Numbers and Subjects.
If you type just S < RETURN > , the list will begin at the most
recent message, while if you type S followed by a Message
Parameter (for example: S25, S-4752), the list will begin at that
specific message. The list will look something like this:
Msg# Subject
55 Just a Test
54 Pretty Common Name Eh?
et cetera . . .
SEL — Selective Message Reading
With this group of functions (SEL, SELS, SELF and SELT), you
can apply the same syntax as with SCN, but instead of seeing
a summary listing of the matching message, you can actually
read them. For instance, if you wanted to read all messages sent
from STEVE PUNTER, you would type: SELF STEVE
PUNTER.
If you stop this function and return to Command >, it can
be restarted with the NEXT command.
See the next section for more detail on function syntax.
SCN — Scan Message Subjects
This function is nearly identical to the S (Summary) command,
except that it lets you select what you wish to look for. This is
accomplished by supplying the function with a Search String.
By choosing one of the SCNF, SCNT, SCNS, or SCN functions,
you may choose to have the search applied to the FROM field,
the TO field, the SUBJECT field, or all three simultaneously.
Any time the search string is found anywhere in the selected
field of a message, that message will have its number and sub-
ject printed . Additionally , you may select to have only a certain
Message Category looked at in conjunction with your search
string.
The basic syntax of this command is:
SCN [cat* ]; [search string], [parameter]
The Message Parameter is optional. If left out, the search will
begin at Message Number 1. The Category Number is also op-
tional . If it is left out, all messages will be searched. The search
string itself may be left out, but only if you include a Category
Number. This arrangement allows a search for all messages
within a certain category.
It is important to remember that if a Category Number is in-
cluded, you must also put in the semicolon, even if no search
string is given.
Here are some examples:
Assume you wish to see a list of alt the messages from the
SYSOP (ignore the category, and start from Message Number
1). You would type: SCNF SYSOP.
If you wanted to list all the messages to the SYSOP, you would
type: SCNT SYSOP.
Suppose you wanted to list every message in category 2. You
would type: SCN 2;.
Note that if you left out the semicolon, the BBS would think
the 2 was a Search String, rather than a Category Number. Now
suppose you wanted to read all the messages about 1541 drives
For Sale (assume that is Category 1). You would type: SCN
1;1541.
And, to find messages after Number 50 concerning Apples
(any category), type: SCNS APPLE,50.
By using variations on the above syntax, it is possible to list
messages pertaining to just about any subject you wish.
TIME — Show Date and Connect Time
This function will let you see how long you have been signed
on to the board this session, and what the date is. Type TIME
< RETURN > and you will see the date and time in the form:
1635h on 03-Apr-85
Connect Time: 0:32:55
TOME — List Messages Sent To You
Although READ lets you read all messages that were sent to
you, you can get a quick list of the message numbers and sub-
jects of all those messages by typing TOME < RETURN >.
Following TOME with a message parameter will cause it to
start at that specific message, rather than the most recent.
An example listing:
Msg# Subject
74 Testing
52 Hi There
25 What's Up Steve
et cetera . . .
U — Examine User List
The User List is the list of all people who have accessed the
system. Instead of just reading through all of them (it would
take a very long time), you give information to tell the BBS
where to start the listing. Names are stored in alphabetical order
(by first name). Type U < RETURN > and you will be prompted
with:
Starting Pattern Match?
>
Enter a string of characters. The BBS will now search the user
list for the first reference to these characters (or the next highest
string, if they are not found), and begin listing.
For example, let us assume you wanted to start listing from
the people whose names started with 'ST': we would simply
enter ST as our Starting Pattern Match. If you were looking
for just a specific user, the best thing to do is to enter the en-
tire name as the pattern match.
Simply pressing RETURN for the Starting Pattern Match will
cause the listing to start from the beginning.
Uploading and Downloading
The sending of a program to the BBS is called UPloading, Tak-
ing a program from it is called DOWNloading.
To be able to upload or download, you will require a terminal
program that supports the Punter transfer protocol. Such ter-
minal programs are available through TPUG for the Commodore
PET, C-64 or VIC 20 computers. These programs are public do-
main, meaning that there are no restrictions on copying them
or giving them away.
January/February 1985 25
Directories
BBS64 offers up to ten separate Directories (0 to 9) for upload-
ed programs. These Directories can be given different Operating
Hours — hours when uploading to and downloading from each
Directory can take place.
Also defined are types of transmission protocols you are allow-
ed to use in each Directory. The 'old' protocol, Cl, or both may
be allowed.
Commodore 64 and VIC 20 directories may be restricted to
the Cl protocol only, as the old protocol takes much more time
to use, thus a user will use up much more connect time. If this
is the case, the SYSOP may set up a separate Directory that
allows the 'old' protocol, from which you can download public
domain Cl terminal programs.
Directories will not necessarily be split by computer type: the
SYSOP can decide to use one or all of the ten available direc-
tories for anything he or she likes.
Commands and Directory Numbers
To refer to a specific Directory in a command, simply add the
Directory Number to the end of the command. For example,
LISTO will list the contents of Directory 0; L0NG2 will give a
long (detailed) listing of Directory 2; SAVE1 will upload to Direc-
tory 1; and L0AD5 will download from Directory 5.
Every command, except LIST and LONG, will default to the
last accessed Directory, if no Directory Number has been given.
If no Directory has yet been accessed, the command will default
to Directory 0. LIST and LONG, without a Directory Number,
will simply list all Directories, their Numbers, Names, Hours,
and Protocols.
Transmission Protocols
Two separate transmission protocols are available from BBS64.
The first protocol, generally referred to as the 'old' protocol,
is Steve Punter's original. This is the protocol that was used
extensively by Commodore PET owners; it was later converted
to the Commodore 64 and the VIC 20.
The second protocol, the 'new' Punter protocol (officially
known as 'Cl'), was written to ensure fast, error-free uploading
and downloading. This protocol was not based on any existing
protocol, but was designed from the ground up, taking into con-
sideration the problems with all other protocols.
Cl is over twice as fast as the old protocol, and offers extreme-
ly accurate transmission, even over very bad telephone connec-
tions. Its speed is boosted by its ability to transmit blocks of
various sizes: small blocks may be sent under adverse conditions,
as opposed to sending full size blocks of 255 bytes. As there is
a much greater possibility of getting smaller blocks through, Cl
is much faster than other protocols under such conditions.
LIST — List Available Programs
In order to see information on programs you may download,
enter LIST < RETURN > . If you have not specified a Directory
Number, you will receive a listing of all Directories, their Names,
Numbers, Operating Hours and Protocols, in a form something
like this:
U:Unlimited
D: Unlimited
U:[No Access]
D:[No Access]
U: Unlimited
1 2
1 2
1 2
1 2
1 2
# Contents
Commodore 64
1 VIC 20
2 PET (4000/8000)
Hours
D:2100h-0900h
UiUniimited
D:2100h-0900h
U:0800h-0000h
D: Unlimited
Prot
2
2
1 2
1 2
1 2
3 Terminal Programs
4 Upload Section
Further Information?
For further help on using the Load Link Commands, answer
Yes. Otherwise, just answer No.
If you specify a Directory Number when you enter the LIST
Command, that Directory will be shown to you, in the follow-
ing format:
Directory 0: Commodore 64
ST File Name Sender
P TEST PROGRAM STEVE PUNTER
5 A SEQ FILE JOE USER
W WORDPRO FILE JANE DOE
•P PROTECTED PRG JOHN SMITH
*S PROTECTED SEQ SYSOP
*W PROTECTED WP SYSOP
85 Blocks Free
Under the S column , a * (asterisk) will appear if the file has had
a Security Code applied by its sender. In order to download such
a file, a user must know its Security Code. Thus, a group of users
may transfer files between themselves without worrying about
the entire BBS community obtaining them.
Under the T column, the type of file is listed. There are three
types of files possible: Program (P), Sequential (S), and Word-
Pro (W).
LONG — List With File Descriptions
If LONG is used without a Directory Number, it will function
in the same manner as LIST, and return the same list of available
directories. Given with a Directory Number, it will list the pro-
gram name, its size in blocks, upload date and description (sup-
plied at the time of upload by the sender). The LONG list will
look something like this:
File Name Size Date Uploaded
SOLITAIRE 33.5 13-Feb-85
- THE CLASSIC CARD GAME OF PATIENCE
SEQ LISTER 1 19-Mar-85
- LIST SEQ FILES TO YOUR SCREEN
85 Blocks Free
LOAD — Load a File
Type LOAD < RETURN >, or LOAD* < RETURN > . You will
see:
Directory #: Name
Name of File? >
Type in the full name of the file. The BBS will now search the
Directory for the name given. If it is not found, you will be in-
formed and returned to the Name of File? prompt. If it was
found, you will be given a quick description of the file (entered
by the sender) and told approximately how long a perfect
transmission will take:
File Description:
>SOME TYPE OF FILE DESCRIPTION
Estimated Transmission Times
Old Protocol: 2.3 Minutes
New Protocol: 1.1 Minutes
Current Block Size: 255
26 TPUG Magazine
Choose Receive Option or press A to
ABORT, B to alter Block Size
If you have a terminal program with the 'new' protocol, you may
choose to alter Block Size. You would be asked:
Block Size?
After entering a new Block Size (40-255), it will be confirmed:
New Block Size: 200
You are now ready to receive the file (if using one of the sup-
plied terminal programs, press CLR/HOME for the menu, then
select Receive a Program).
If you decide that you don't want to go ahead with the LOAD,
press A: you will be returned to Command (S:0) >.
There are numerous ways in which a LOAD may end. When
the load is complete, one of the following status messages will -
be sent:
OK
Means the program was transmitted properly.
G/B Signal Lost
Means that your transmission of the Good or Bad signal for
the current block was somehow lost; transmission has been
aborted ('old' protocol only).
Over 5 Tries For a Single Block
Means that the board tried five times, unsuccessfully, to send
a block; transmission has been aborted.
System Abort
Means the SYSOP aborted the transmission on you for some
reason .
Load Aborted
Means you aborted the transmission at some point.
SAVE — Save File to the BBS
Type SAVE < RETURN >, or SAVE* < RETURN >. You will
be prompted for the file name, but also shown how many blocks
are available on the chosen Directory:
Directory #: Name
Disk Space Available: XXX Blocks
Name of File? >
Give the name by which you would tike your file stored. The BBS
will now search the Directory to determine whether or not that
name has already been used. If it has, you will be told so and
returned to the Name of File? prompt. If the name has not been
used, you will now be asked:
Security Code (or < RETURN > for General Distribution)?
>
As it says, if you just press RETURN, the file can be download-
ed by anyone (with the proper terminal program of course); while
if you do enter something (up to 6 characters), only those per-
sons knowing this code will be able to load the file. You will now
see:
Deletion Code? >
If you wish to be able to delete the file in the future, this code
is needed. Enter up to 6 characters. If only RETURN is entered,
only the SYSOP can delete the file. You will now see:
Describe the file in 36 Characters >
Within no more than 36 characters, give a useful description
of the file you are uploading. You will now see:
Choose Transmit Option or press A to ABORT
Once the upload is finished, the number of blocks received will
be sent back to you so you can determine whether the entire
file was sent or not:
If using old protocol:
Done:25 Blocks
If using new protocol:
Done:25 Blocks
6350 Bytes
As with LOAD, there are a number of ways that the save can
end up. Many of the same conditions exist, but with one extra:
Disk Full will be returned in the Status Variable (see STAT) if
the file you were uploading exceeded the available space on the
diskette. Should this occur, the file being uploaded will be deleted
from the disk and the Directory will be left looking exactly as
it did before the upload began.
Note: In both the LOAD and SAVE functions, a report of how
well the transmission is progressing is shown on the screen by
a series of dashes and colons. Each dash represents a properly
transmitted block, while each colon represents a badly transmit-
ted block. In the new protocol only, a * (asterisk) represents
a properly transmitted last block.
You do not need to specify which of the two Punter protocols
you are using. BBS64 will recognize it automatically, then set
itself t<j use that specific protocol.
STAT — File Transfer Status Message
After doing a LOAD or a SAVE, a message was sent to tell you
how the transfer worked. If, for some reason, you didn't get
to see this message, or you would like to see it again, simply
type STAT < RETURN >.
CBM — Change 'Old' Download Timing
Due to a problem in timing between C-64 'old' protocol download
software and PET 'old' protocol download software, both re-
quire different setups. To change between Standard C-64 and
CBM timing, type CBM < RETURN >. You will be presented
with either:
Standard Timing
or. . .
Old CBM Timing
Aside from these messages, you may quickly verify the timing
scheme selected by looking at the command prompt itself. Where
N is the last referenced directory, it may say:
Command (S:N) >
or. . .
Command (C:N) >
Message-Editor Instructions
The Message Editor is a powerful tool for correcting errors in
messages you have just entered. Each command follows a basic
syntax that is easily learned and remembered, as only the first
letter of the command is needed.
The commands fall into two groups: those with arguments, and
those without. Commands with arguments are entered by typ-
ing the command's letter followed immediately by the argument.
For example, if we wished to edit line 15, we would type E15.
Since you may not always remember to type the argument, it
will be asked for should you forget. Commands without arguments
are even simpler: you just type the command's letter followed
by RETURN.
The following sections detail all the Message Editor commands.
January/February 1985 27
L — List
Parameters accompanying Message Editor functions refer to
line numbers in the listed form of the message (as typed), not
the formatted form. To see the message in its listed form, type
L followed by the line number at which the list is to start, follow-
ed by RETURN. Listing can be stopped with any of the abort
operations (CTRL-A, CTRL-P)
A — Abort Message
If you are totally dissatisfied with the message and feel that no
form of editing would rescue it, you have the option of totally
aborting. Simply type A < RETURN >. To prevent accidental
aborts, you will be asked:
Are You Sure?
Answer Yes or No.
C — Continue
Once you have exited the message entering routine, and have
had the message formatted for you, you may go back and add
to it with the Continue command. Type C < RETURN >, and
you will be asked:
Continue On Same Paragraph?
If you want the text you enter to be part of the last paragraph
in the existing message, answer Yes. If you want this new text
to be separate from the last paragraph of the existing message,
answer No. You may now continue as if there had been no
interruption.
D — Delete Line
Entire lines can be quickly deleted with this function. Type D
followed by a range of lines (see LIST) to be deleted. For exam-
ple: D5 deletes only line 5; D4- deletes all lines from 4 onwards;
D-10 deletes all lines up to, and including, line 10; and D11-16
deletes all lines from 11 to 16 inclusive.
E — Edit Line
This function was added for those used to it from other systems,
but Search and Replace is a far easier function to use to fix er-
rors in a line. In the event you would like to retype an entire
line, Edit is available.
Type E followed by the line (see List) to be edited. The cur-
rent line will be listed and you will be given the option of retyp-
ing it, or just pressing RETURN to leave it alone.
F — Format Message
When you finished typing in your message, it was formatted
for you. If you would like to see it formatted again, type F
< RETURN >.
If you have not yet sent any of the message you are working
on to disk (with Yes to Continue Message after Writing?), typ-
ing F < RETURN > will result in the immediate formatting of
your message. If this is the second, or higher message section,
you will first be asked:
Entire Msg?
By answering No, you will see only those lines in the current
message section . If you answer Yes, then you will see your en-
tire message formatted.
I — Insert Mode
You may add text to the middle of an already existing block of
text using this command. Type J followed by the line before which
you wish to insert this new text. The system will prompt with:
Continue On Same Paragraph?
Answer as you did with Continue, and proceed to enter new
text as though this were the Continue command. Once you have
finished, hit RETURN on a blank line.
P — Paragraph
If you enter RETURN on a line, it will contain an End-Of-
Paragraph marker. This marker (EOP for short) tells the for-
matter where to break a paragraph. You can add or remove
EOPs from a line with the Paragraph function. Type P fol-
lowed by the line at which the EOP is to be altered, followed
by RETURN.
R — Search And Replace
Spelling errors and other small mistakes can be fixed with E
(Edit), but that requires typing in the whole line over again, and
could result in more mistakes. Search and Replace is much more
powerful .
The syntax of Search And Replace (S&R for short) is as
follows:
R/(Search]/[Replace]/[Llne Number]
For instance, let us assume that line 12 looked like this:
12 and I wouldd like to know just how
We want to get rid of the extra d in would. Our S&R line will be:
r/wouldd/would/12
Actually, all we would have needed is:
r/dd/d/12
Some caution is necessary. Consider the following line:
27 gett the kettle for me please
If we used tt as the search string, both references in this line
would be found, and that would be incorrect. Always be as
specific as necessary, but there is no need to overdo it.
To help you determine if errors (such as the one in the exam-
ple above) have occurred, the number of substitutions made is
told to you. If there were two or more substitutions and you
only expected one, check the new line carefully.
S — Send
Once a message has been edited to your liking, you can send
it by typing S < RETURN >. You will be prompted with:
Continue Message After Writing?
If you ran out of editing space, but still wish to continue with
the message after this block is sent to disk, answer Yes. If this
is the absolute end of your message, answer No.
Should you accidentally say Yes when you meant No, wait
until the BBS allows you to continue your message , then just
press RETURN. The system will verify by saying:
Ok, Closing Off Message O
Since this documentation was written, Steve Punter has
added yet more functions to his BBS program, including
a TRACE feature (for tracing message threads) and a
POLL feature. Even more interesting is the recent incep-
tion of PunterNet, a network of Punter BBSs that Steve
hopes may eventually incorporate more than one hundred
nodes (individual boards). Look for more information on
these developments in upcoming issues of the magazine.
28 TPUG Magazine
Micro Processes.
File Recovery
by John Easton
If you're like me on-line, you sometimes want to get caught up
in a hurry, so you set about 'capturing' a whole mess of text
at one time, thinking that you'll print it out and digest it later.
This weekend I attempted to get caught up with the UNISON
system, (which has a 'batch read' capability). 1 logged on dur-
ing the football game and (knowing there was a lot to download)
hooked my 8250 disk drive to the system and asked for a 'batch
read' of everything in my 'Inbox' (their method of letting you
know what you haven't read yet). I set everything to spool to
disk, and went back to watch the game. . .
When I regained consciousness, there it was: a full disk, with
the last 1900-plus block file marked with the dreaded '*' sym-
bol — meaning that the file wasn't closed properly, and that if
I wanted to proceed further with any manipulation of the disk,
I ought to validate it — effectively removing that massive file
for ever.
Since I hadn't even read the file yet (and apparently had no
way to read it, since one can't normally access an improperly-
closed file), I got to digging through old issues of The Transac-
tor and such for some magic that might help unlock the 'lost'
file. (I've since been informed that the Transactor Anthology
book mentions this 'quirk', but I never got that far.) Sure, I have
'disk doctor'-type programs that will do the job on normal
4040-type disks, but nowhere did I find reference to a job of this
size. A call to Jim Butterfield Monday morning at least reassured
me that all wasn't lost, and he proceeded to talk of BAMs and
tracks and sectors — all very clear to Jim, but less so for me
— especially with the current lack of 8250 documentation at
hand.
To make a long story short, I did read up on all the BAMs
and tracks and sectors (and still had to come up with a definitive
solution), when another call to Jim (on another matter) prompted
him to say: "By the way, you know you don't really have to go
to all that trouble with file recovery. Commodore built in a com-
mand to do it for you."
As I picked up my chair, Jim went on to explain the magic
'M' command. It seems that if you care to open a file to disk
with 'M' instead of 'R' (for read), the disk will just go ahead and
read, mindless of any errors it might encounter on the way
(maybe that's what 'M' stands for — 'mindless'?). Thus cheered,
I sat down and typed something like the following into a File
Recover program:
10 open 2,8,2,"0:oldfile,s,m"
20 open 3,8,3,"l:neufile,£,u"
30 open 4,4
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
110
120
130
140
get #2, a* : rem
pr int#3 , a$; : rem
print a$; : rem to
print#4, a$; : rem to
get b*: if b$ <) "a"
pr int#3:close 3
pr- int#4 :cl ose 4
close 2
end
from d i s K
to d isK
screen
pr inter
then 50
A word of explanation might be appropriate for line 100. As Jim
pointed out, this type of file read doesn't necessarily stop for
errors, so you need a way to abort the whole operation, should
you encounter garbage. Line 100 lets everything whirl away till
you care to enter an 'a' from the keyboard — at which time all
is closed down in an orderly fashion, and you now have what
was readable from the old file transferred to a new file on a new
disk, which you can now read in the normal fashion.
For the curious: yes, it works flawlessly and — thanks to hav-
ing the foresight to also include a printout — as I worked away
on another machine, just listening to the printer allowed me to
pick up the end of the file. When the file finally quit, it ran into
a 'closed loop', and thus repeated the same block of text several
times until my ear picked up the repeated rhythm. I then called
the 'abort* function to the rescue.
Time to transfer approximately 1900 blocks of text? About
three hours — which isn't far from what it would have taken
to print the pound or so of paper that resulted, anyway. But
let me tell you, we sure won't need toilet paper in the bathroom
for a while! □
Doubling
1526/MPS802
Ribbon Life
by Howard M. Mesick
Catchy title, huh? Sort of hits you in the old wallet.
The expensive 1526 ribbon cartridge is a long box in which
a continuous loop of ribbon is fan-folded , The ribbon always runs
in the same direction, filling up one end of the cartridge while
emptying from the other. It is a plastic band, covered with car-
bon only on one face.
On each pass, some carbon transfers to the paper. After a few
passes, the print becomes noticeably lighter, because most of
the carbon is gone. Observe, however, that the used-up portion
occupies only the centre third of the band. The top and the bot-
tom are still new.
January/February 1985 29
Micro Processes =
I haven't figured an easy way to get to the top but, to access
the bottom, you need only tilt the front of the cartridge up a
little (the front is the part with the two arms from which the
ribbon is stretched), so that the print needles strike the untouch-
ed bottom portion of the band. If you tip the cartridge too far,
you may disengage the feed mechanism and/or lose the lower
part of your characters. If the latter happens, turn off the
printer, so that you don't excessively wear the lowest needles
of the print head. If those wires miss striking the ribbon too
long, costly damage could result. You may want to reseat the
cartridge normally before trying again.
Once you get used to repositioning the ribbon, it should be
easier. Mine stays put fairly well, with only an occasional touch -
up nudge. Before printing a long document, run off a test line
or two. Examine for cut-off capitals or descenders every few
pages. If the cartridge wants to move up or down, a little paper
or plastic wrap between the extrusions on the arms, and the
slots into which those extrusions fit, may tighten things up. A
drop of fast-drying glue also works wonders. Careful! Don't get
any on the head transport bands, or lay so much on you can't
break the cartridge loose when it's old.
Commodore can't figure out what to call its better dot matrix
printer for the VIC7C-64/C-1281ine. The first ones were 1526s;
then came MPS802s. A local retailer says he's presently get-
ting units marked '1526/MPS802' and 'MP802/1526'. Whatever
Commodore calls it, you can save money on the cartridge. G
Nitpicking
Through Print Using
And Rounding
by Elizabeth Deal
Need a good subject for debate in your neighborhood? Here's
one: how to round numbers. Want to know more about PRINT
USING? Here we go:
Computers that have a formatting command for numbers
(PRINT USING) usually round the numbers to the nearest
decimal point that you specify. If you want to see numbers with
two places after a decimal point, you'll code PRINT US-
ING ,, ##.##" so that:
• 1.44412 prints as 1.44
• 2.4494 prints as 2.45
• 3.44669 prints as 3.45
Neat and compact.
Let's look at some specific examples of what is involved in
rounding. For simplicity, we'll just try to round numbers to the
nearest integer. We can probably all agree that:
• 1.987 becomes 2
• 1.5198 becomes 2
• 3.5 becomes 4
But what about 2.5? Some say it should be 3, under the theory
of always rounding up. Others claim that 2.5 should be rounded
to 2. You can have a raging debate. Such is currently the case
in my neighbourhood. Fascinating. Useless. Useful. I don't know.
I belong to the group that rounds 2.5 down to 2 because 2 is
an even number. Several reasons:
• I have an old Polish math book that says that if what remains
after chopping the digits is odd, a 'one' should be added: other-
wise, leave it alone.
• A statistics book, while not recommending operations on
rounded numbers (bad practice!), says that if you must work with
rounded numbers, the cumulative error is minimized if you follow
the odd -even rule.
• Pragmatic: I balance my chequebook by estimating. At the
end of the month, I'm practically never over a dollar away from
what the computers at the bank said.
Time for a demo. We don't need a computer. Let's estimate
the sum of four numbers:
Odd-even
2
2
4
4
Sums: 12.0 14 12
As can you see, under the odd-even rule, the rounding errors
balance out . You can be pretty sure that if the computer printed
using this rule, you could safely use the printed values for fur-
ther math, even though that kind of use is frowned upon in all
textbooks.
The sum of the numbers calculated using the round-up rule
is a bit 'off. It's okay for many uses — nothing really bad with
that value — but you must never do anything with the resulting
values, other than look at them. Do not ever try to use the out-
puts as inputs into another program that might perform calcula-
tions on those numbers. You shouldn't even try to use them in
plotting things such as pie -charts or histograms, as the total per
cent may exceed 100. The cumulative errors just get too large .
It's unfortunate that Commodore chose to use the 'always
round up' rule in the Plus/4, B-128/256 and C-128 computers.
It seems like an arbitrary decision that could backfire. I can
understand the taxation authorities telling you to always round
up to the nearest dollar — they have to balance the budget,
somehow'. But my home computer has nothing to balance . . . □
/alues
Round-up
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
t.5
5
The ABasiC Dir
Command
by Chris Johnson
If your Amiga has only one drive, the Dir command in ABasiC
will only allow you to see the directory of the Workbench (or
other) disk that you used to boot the system. In order to see
the directory of another disk, you have to use the SHELL
command:
SHELL "Dir <dir>"
where <dir> is the name of the disk you want catalogued.
30 TPUG Magazine
This also allows you to use the redirection capability in the
Command Line Interface (CLI). If you wanted to make use of
the names of the files on your disk, you could send the direc-
tory to a file instead of the screen, then read that file from your
program, entering the file names into a string array,
SHELL "Dir > DF0:DTY"
This will send the directory to a file called DTY on the disk in
DFO:. It gets a little trickier if you want to specify a sub-
directory. The name of the sub-directory must follow the redirec-
tion command:
SHELL "Dir > RAM:DTY DF0:C"
This will send the directory to a file in RAM: called DTY. This
can be opened from ABasiC in the same way as a disk file, but
if you want to use the file names, List would be easier to use,
since it puts just one file or directory name to a line. With the
List command, the redirection can come at the end of the line:
SHELL "List DFO:C > DF0:Files"
To those of us used to working with 64K RAM at most, it may
seem strange, but an Amiga with only 256K RAM is somewhat
limited. The SHELL command may not work, particularly if
you have a large program in memory or large files in RAM:.D
Fear Of Mice . . .
by Chris Johnson
Do I dislike the 'mouse' because I think the keyboard is a better
person-to-computer interface? Or do I dislike it because there
is never a large-enough clear space on my (actually quite
spacious) desktop? Whatever the reason, I find many tasks re-
quire the use of the keyboard, and having to use the mouse can
often be an annoyance, rather than a help.
The AmigaDOS Command Line Interface (CLI) is a more
traditional user interface, with similarities to CP/M or MS-DOS.
It is in the System drawer on the Workbench disk. (It must
first be activated by using Preferences).
CLI has a number of very powerful commands (see TPUG
Magazine, December 1985). I often do not want to go through
the Workbench to get at a facility like ED, (which I am using
to write this article). Instead, I use a disk that will go straight
into the CLI when the Amiga asks for the Workbench disk at
power-up.
To prepare such a disk, use the Install command from the
CLI. However, there will be a problem if you only have one drive.
The syntax is Install DFO:. Unfortunately, this will only install
the disk that is already in the drive. To get around this! the In-
stall command must be loaded into RAM:. The following se-
quence will Install a disk so that it can be used in place of
Workbench on power-up:
COPY :C/lnstall to RAM:
Replace the Workbench disk with the (formatted) disk you want
to install:
RAM:lrtstall DFO:
For this disk to be useful, you will want some of the CLI com-
Micrn Processes
mands on it. These are contained on the Workbench disk in the
directory :C. The easiest way to do the transfer seems to be to
Copy the directory into RAM:, then Copy RAM: to your disk:
Copy :C TO RAM:
Insert your disk in the drive.
RAM:Makedir DFO:C
RAM:Copy RAM: to DF0:C
RAM:lnstall DFO:
Depending on what you are going to be doing, you may also need
to copy one or more of the other directories from the Workbench
disk. The same procedure will work for them.
Using the CLI instead of Workbench may mean you will have
to do a little more housekeeping yourself. ABasiC, for exam-
ple, requires a larger stack than the default of 4000. Workbench
would take care of this for you; CLI does not. In order to run
ABasiC from a CLI window, you must first increase the stack
with :
Stack 8000
Using Workbench, it takes about forty seconds from the time
the Amiga asks for the Workbench disk to the time you can
be in CLI. Booting directly into CLI can be accomplished in ten
seconds.
January/February 1985 31
Library Additions
VIC 20 Disk (V)G2
Presented by Richard Best
TPUG has just issued an all new VIC
Library catalog, listing al! of the disks
and tapes now available. (Many thanks to
Anne Gudz for her perserverance.
Thanks also to Louise Redgers and Doris
Bradley.) Many have never appeared in
these pages so, beginning this month, 1
will be featuring (at least occasionally)
back issues in addition to regular monthly
disks. This month I would like to in-
troduce you to (V)G2, one of our games
compendia.
There's lots of vintage entertainment
on this reissue. Slither 4 adds barriers to
this classic game. A popular puzzle game
has been recreated in Towers Of Hanoi.
Watch out for rocks and flower beds
when you play Lawnmower. Become a
part of Greek mythology by helping
Icarus to recover lost feathers. Galactic
Code will let you encode and decode
messages by substituting numbers for
letters.
Turnip is a lot like Slither, except that
this worm likes to eat carrots, and
sometimes his tail becomes a lit fuse. Pilot
your ship through five treacherous caves
in VICQuest. Watch out for the aliens.
Queen's Plate brings you the excitement
of the track. Up to four may 'play the
horses'. Slither Duel is more traditional,
with two opponent snakes playing against
each other. See the psychologist's maze
from the inside in Ratrap. Use your
joystick to race for the cheese.
During Visiting Hours at the hospital,
you must search out a variety of objects
and collect them into one room. Or gather
the Rebel Forces together to defeat
Darth Vader in Jedi. Nitemare Park
becomes a real nightmare when you en-
counter villains and obstacles in this
deceptively quiet place. Experience the
'final frontier' once again in Star Trek.
Clear all 16 quadrants of Klingons
without resorting to the deadly
Corbomite.
Don't forget to send for the new
catalog. And keep those programs com-
ing in! Q
vic-£0 d isK <v>g£
14 "list-me <v>g2" Prg
28 "ratrapSK.u " prg
23 Vescufi8K.u" Pi"9
35 n jedi8K.v" P""9
51
18
£6
11
3
12
10
12
1 1
12
7
8
10
10
11
4
343
"star treKl6K.v" prg
"visiting hrs8K.v" prg
"nightmare pK8K.v" prg
"si ither duel3.v " prg
"si ither boot .v " prg
"si ither 4.v" prg
"galactic code.v" prg
"turnip boot.v" prg
"turnip main.v" prg
"towers o hanoi.v" prg
"icarus boot.v" prg
"icarus main.v" prg
"lawnmower ,v " prs
"vicquest boot.v" prg
"vicquest main.v" prg
"queens plate. v" prg
blocKs -free.
VIC 20 Disk (V)TP
Presented by Richard Best
You may have noticed that issues (V)TM,
(VJTN and (V)TO are missing. In order
to keep pace with other libraries, we are
leaping ahead to (V)TP.
The December disk is, as usual, a
marvellous collection of members' output.
We have a nice variety of games here ,
and some very good educational and pro-
ductivity programs. T'Bird-Joy is a fast-
moving Breakout-style game that should
provide hours of fun. Apple Pick'n has
the player digging for apples and trapp-
ing monsters, while music plays
throughout. More music, this time
polyphonic, is available from Fugue. The
melodies are stored in arrays. Planets
you've seen before. This update corrects
the position of Pluto.
Geom Plot features a novel approach
to graphing a geometric equation, and
allows replotting when the graph 'blips'
off the screen. Breakout is standard, but
should be useful for budding game
players or game authors. For the statisti-
cian in the family, there is Roll Dice,
which calculates probabilities. B-B-
Bounce is a unique lesson in animation,
in the form of a game skeleton complete
with paddle, barriers and bouncing ball.
Still can't figure out metric (or im-
perial)? Metrivert will do it for you, in-
cluding weights, measures, distances and
temperatures. Two small data bases,
Paperboy and Chequebook, will help you
keep track of your paper route and your
bank account.
Logger is a nicely-written Donkey
Kong-type game — just right for the
younger player. Grungy Towers has
been updated once again, adding better
logic and VIC-oriented screens.
Budgeting is a powerful little financial
manager. This menu-driven wonder
should have your books in shape in no
time.
QCUG of Belleville has graciously con-
tributed a graphics utility called, simply,
Graphic. It adds SuperExpander com-
mands to an expanded VIC. Three demo
programs are included that show how the
commands are used. The routines are
much faster than the SX. D
y ic -20 d isK (v >tp
10 "list-me (v)t-o/l" prg
8 "list-me page £" prg
15 "t 'b ird-joy .v5K " prg
6 "apple boot.vSK" prg
11 "apple picK/n" prg
7 "fugue, v" prg
1 "planets . ins " prg
12 "geom plot . v" prg
10 "breaKout . v5K " prg
7 "roll d i c e . v " prg
G "b-b -bounce ,v5K " prg
7 "metr ivert . v " prg
7 "paperboy.v" prg
5 "chequebook . v " prg
1G "logger . v5K " prg
22 "log" prg
£8 "grungy twrs.vlSK" prg
16 "budget ing .v 1£K " prg
9 "graph ic. w ISK " prg
2 "canada flag" prg
3 "plotter" prg
4 "gr . amer . hero" prg
451 blocks free.
PET Disk (P)TP
Presented by Mike Donegan
Most of this month's PET disk consists
of educational programs, including
Enhanced Logic Simulator, by Robert
McDermott, an intriguing digital logic
simulation program. This was originally
a C-64 program, and requires PETload
64. p (included on the disk) to load.
PETload 64.p will not fix peeks, pokes,
sound or graphics stuff.
The other educational programs are
part of a set started on the November
PET disk, (P)TN. They include
Resonance. p, a program to help you
study resonance and standing waves in
32 TPUG Magazine
NAME
STREET ADDRESS
CITY/TOWN/P.O.
PROV/STATE
TELEPHONE
Software
form
POSTAL/ZIP CODE
MEMBERSHIP NO.
TORONTO PET USERS GROUP, 101 Duncan Mill Road, Suite G7, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 1Z3 416-445-4524
To order club disks by mail, send $10.00 for each
4040/2031/1540/1541 disk (4040 format), discount price
5-10 S9.00 each, II or more S8.00 each; and S12.00 for
each 8050/8250 disk (8050 format). We do honour
purchase orders from school boards.
These disks are for use with a
Please send me the following:
3 Letter/No.
Code
computer and a .
Description
4040 or B050
Format
Price
disk drive.
Total S
.00
tapes
To order VIC 20 or Commodore 64 library
tapes, send S6.00 for each tape.
To order PET/CBM or Commodore Educa
tional Software, send S10.00 for each tape.
These tapes are for use with a .
If for a PET computer, what model -
3 Letter/No. Code Description
_ computer and a datasette.
BASIC - 1.0( ); 2.0( ); 4.0(
Price
I?
Total S
.00
The prices indicated include postage and handling as well as
Ontario Provincial Sales Tax. (if applicable)
D Cheque/money order enclosed (payable to TPUG|
□Visa/Mastercard #
\ , Signature
Library Additions - =
strings and air; Key Signatures. p, to
teach one to read the musical staff; and
Canadian geog.p, an aid in learning to
identify Canadian geographic locations.
Ascii <--> Petscii, by Ian Wright, is
a utility program that converts ASCII
files to PETSCII files and back, from a
source file on either tape or disk, to your
choice of the screen, printer, tape, or disk
as the destination. This is also a C-64 pro-
gram requiring PETload.p to load.
Another true PET utility is Disk
Check.p, to look at and check your disk.
Finally, there is a version of Jim But-
terfieid's popular Supermon+ for the
PET. You will find a documentation file
for this monitor on C-64 disk (C)TL. □
pet d isK (.p )tp
15 "1 ist-me ptp .1 " prg
8S Mo9icsim adv.c" prg
3 "jK-flip-flop" seq
1 "and" seq
1 "or" seq
2 "-full adder" seq
32 "logics inn. c " prg
5G "resonance .p " prg
36 "meter reading.?" prg
30 "-forces. p" prg
58 "chemistry pr-ob.p" prg
54 "equivalents.?" prg
54 "equations 2.p" prg
35 "Canadian geog.p" prg
38 '"Key s ignatures ,p " prg
£4 "periodic prop.p" prg
15 "asc i i/petsc ii .c * prg
5 "pe-tload 64. p" prg
14 "supermon+.p " prg
17 "disK checK.p" prg
92 blocKs -free .
The B-128 Library
Presented by Paul Aitchison
As of January 1986, the TPUG B-128
library contains four disks, two entitied
■Utilities' - (B)U1 and (B)U2 - and two
miscellaneous disks called 'Potpourri' —
(B)P1 and (B)P2. The latter are gleanings
of the C-64 and PET libraries, along with
some new programs. I have attempted to
modify the C-64 and PET programs to
run on the B-128, and have tested them
in most modes; however, being human
(me, not the B-128), I may not have
caught all the bugs. If you find any I
missed, please send me corrections.
Original programs, whether 'freeware'
or public domain, and rehashed programs
from existing libraries, would also be
welcomed. Please do not submit a pro-
gram that may have copyright limita-
tions, unless the author has given permis-
sion, in writing, for it to be distributed
as public domain or freeware. (The term
'freeware' describes programs, usually of
commercial quality, that the author has
placed in public domain libraries, leaving
it to the user to determine how much, if
anything, should be paid.) Remember, the
B-128 is a machine that is no longer in
production , and is unlikely to get any fur-
ther commercial software support, so
support will only come from users' groups
such as TPUG and CBUG. To further this
goal we need your contributions. Even if
your program seems frivolous, or unlikely
to be of general interest, it may contain
useful routines that others may learn
from.
If you include documentation with a
program you submit (very much ap-
preciated), please include it on the same
disk in Superscript II file format. Most
B-128 owners have access to this fine
word processor. We will include your
documentation on the disk when it is
released, so use care (and the spelling
checker) when creating it. We reserve the
right to edit submissions for clarity,
language and length, but we'll attempt to
keep it as complete as possible.
If you request B-128 disks from TPUG,
please state your disk format (8050 or
4040). TPUG supplies disks in 4040 for-
mat unless otherwise specified, and you
will not be able to read them, of course,
on an 8050 drive. TPUG disks are not
copy protected. By the way, it is not good
practice to write to disks not formatted
by your own disk drive. It is therefore
wise to work from backups of your TPUG
disks rather than the originals.
The List-me and program name con-
ventions for the B-128 disks are slightly
different than those of other TPUG
libraries.
Here are the differences:
• The first several lines of the List-me
are set up as a program that will list the
List-me to either the screen or the
printer. It will also allow you to dump the
directory to the printer. Just follow the
instructions on the screen. Don't forget
to hit RETURN on the last line when the
cursor reappears on the screen.
• The single uppercase letter suffixes of
each runnable program (files used by
another program, and machine language
modules, do not have this suffix) indicate
the type of program. Your computer
must be in upper and lower case mode,
or the suffix will appear as a graphic
character. The U suffix indicates a com-
puter utility , for example, and the E suf-
fix indicates an educational program. A
complete list of the suffix meanings is in
the List-me file on each disk. □
b-1
25
35
47
58
19
£5
27
19
17
30
14
26
16
18
61
26
a
33
68
1
1
14
3
5
5
7
9
IE
£9
2
26
18
4
13
82
32
3
1
1
2
34
33
17
38
37
25
11
32
14
c
7
6
14
42
26
20
8
4
£
49
14
715
£8 disK Cb>p£
■list-me <b)p2 L "
"■frosty M"
"bible clues E"
"quiet a-fternoonD"
"end prov caps E'
"early setl
"n .s . c it ies
"n . s . count ies
"days o-f r li-fe
"stocK exchange
"c inqu ian
"drill er/ir/ur
"drill ei/ei
"drill ou/ou
" . j e s u
"address booK
"toKen izer
"mail
"checKbooK
"balance"
"trcounter "
"blocK modifier
"load address
"chr istmas
"square root
"disK tidier
" lemonade
"banKer
"bach indent
"anagram helper
"1 ist-me (b )p 1
"high-q
"bird o-f death
"res i st or /cap
"logic simulator A"
"basic logic simA"
".jK -f 1 ip-f lop"
"and"
"or"
"-full adder"
"ideal mass E"
E"
E"
E"
E"
G"
E"
E"
E"
E"
M"
B"
U"
B"
B"
U"
U"
D"
E"
U"
G"
G"
M"
U"
L"
G"
G"
A"
"elect srvc calcfV'
"math E"
"star bas pr E"
"-french uerbs E"
"disKalc B"
"baby care G"
"-forest ualK G"
"word test E"
"body parts"
"million G"
"autol ine print U"
"computers D"
"the bus barns E"
"enclosures A "
"lotto results A"
"countries E"
"math tutor E"
"gb to usa A"
"shears scoring A"
"b 128 sup r scrpt£"
blocKs free.
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
seq
seq
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
seq
seq
seq
seq
prg
prg
prg
prg
prg
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prg
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seq
prg
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seq
34 TPUG Magazine
OS/9 Software
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Mail merge, Spell checker. Menu driven,
fast. Extensive features. Formats to screen
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C Compiler
A full implementation of K & R standard C,
with double precision variables.
US $138 Cdn $170
BASIC09
A fully structured, sophisticated semi-
compiled (I code) BASIC. See Byte
magazine April 1984. . US $110 Cdn $155
FORTRAN 77
Full FORTRAN compiler. . . coming soon.
US $120 Cdn $166
DynaStar, DynaForm,
DynaSpell
A full screen (similar to microEDIT) editor,
text formatter and spell checker.
US $90 Cdn $127
Other: Pascal, DynaCalc, Database etc., available on
demand.
To Order: Send a cheque or money order (add $10 for
shipping/handling and 7% PST where applicable) to:
TPUG,
101 Duncan Mill Rd., Suite G-7,
Don Mills, Ontario. Canada M3B 1Z3
Limited time offer
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to the highest
quality, lowest
priced brand name
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Q. Who has switched?
A. Professional and educational
institutions, national accounting
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software houses, computer
retailers and the Toronto Pet
Users Group.
Programmers Guild Products Ltd., 255 ManuLile Place, 10180 - 101 St.,
Edmonton, Alberta T5J 3S4 Phone: (403) 428-6229
Reviews.
Vizastar
from Solid State Software
Integrated spreadsheet
and database package
for Commodore 64,
disk drive and printer
Review by Malcolm O'Brien
At the present time, Lotus 1-2-3 is the
most popular software package on the
market. Evidently, integrating a spread-
sheet with a database and a business
graphics program was just what the com-
ptroller ordered. A lot of users are using
nothingbut 1-2-3! If you have an IBM (or
compatible), you can use it too. Of course,
after having spent thousands on the IBM,
you'll still need to cough up about 500
dollars for a copy of Lotus. A hard disk
couldn't hurt, and lots and lots of RAM,
and maybe an AT ... .
There is another solution, though. You
can keep your C-64 (or C-128) and buy
Vizastar. Programmer Kelvin Lacy set
out to produce a program for the C-64
that had the functionality of Lotus —
quite a taskl After more than fifteen
months of work, he had the 45 thousand
bytes that make up the slickest piece of
software you ever saw. Vizastar is
marvellous! Well thought out, well
documented (especially the reference
manual), easy to use and fast. In fact,
Solid State claims that the Vizastar
spreadsheet is faster than some spread-
sheets running on IBMs! I am not in a
position to be able to confirm or deny that
claim, but I can affirm that Vizastar,
which is written entirely in machine
language, performs all its functions quick-
ly (1541 disk operations notwithstanding).
Like Lotus, Vizastar has a very sim-
ple user interface that cloaks a very
sophisticated program. In fact, Vizastar
is superior to Lotus in some w r ays! Three
of my Lotus pet peeves are conspicuous
in their absence from Vizastar. Vizastar
allows control over automatic page
numbering, while Lotus resets to Page
1 with each print operation. Vizastar will
give you a full disk directory on request,
but Lotus displays only Lotus files and
bytes free. To change a single character
in a Lotus database requires loading the
file into memory, changing the character
and then resaving the file. This is very
distressing when the file is a quarter
megabyte (or larger!) in size. Mercifully,
the Vizastar database keeps its records
on disk and affords the user complete
control over which records, and how
many records, will be in memory at any
given time. Memory, by the way,
amounts to 10K (XL4 version), 14K (XLS
version), or 40K (C-128 version).
Although Lotus users might think this is
far too little free RAM, it can be used
very effectively.
Vizastar pie chart screen dump
While we're on the subject of the dif-
ferent versions, I should include a few
notes in the matter of peripherals, as this
may be of particular importance to you.
First, a few quotes from the
documentation:
Disk Drives
"Only the 1541 is currently supported,
because the other non-Commodore drives
are not 100 per cent compatible. One
1541 is required. It will NOT work with
the MSD drives, although we will be
working with MSD to find a solution. It
WILL work correctly with IEEE drives,
such as the 4040/8050/8250/1001 if pro-
perty connected to the C-64 with a
suitable IEEE interface."
"Vizastar can be used with IEEE drives
by using the DAMS IEEE cartridge
(V3.0 on). When ordering this cartridge
ensure that you ask for an extension car-
tridge socket to be fitted. Vizastar can
also be used with INTERPOD available
from Cheetah Marketing. INTERPOD in-
terfaces the C-64 to IEEE disk drives and
printers [via the serial bus], and also to
RS-232 serial printers."
Though no mention is made of the
Buscard or the C-Link, it is to be hoped
that Vizastar will function correctly with
these. But be sure! Check with your
dealer, or write or call Solid State
Software.
Printers
"The pre-set assumption is that you have
a Commodore printer connected such as
the 1525, MPS-801, or 1526 (with cured
timing problems). Vizastar can print out
to both Commodore Printers and direct-
ly to parallel printers via the user port
and a special connecting cable (available
from many suppliers and VIZA SOFT-
WARE. If you have a parallel printer con-
nected to the serial socket via an inter-
face then set a printer type of 'a'.
Vizastar will then send out true ASCII
characters via the serial socket. If you
wish to send information through secon-
dary addresses to your printer or inter-
face this can be done ..."
Once again , it is not clear whether you
can use a parallel printer connected via
the Buscard. The documentation also
states that "On Epson compatible
printers you are able to print out a full
hi-resolution screen copy of your
worksheet graphs", and that "you can
take a printed copy of a screen display by
pressing the Commodore key followed by
3." Regrettably, I had no printer with
which to test these features.
The Spreadsheet
The cartridge portion of Vizastar con-
tains 4K (XL4 version) or 8K (XL8 ver-
sion) of memory. On power up, it tells you
to press the space bar to load Vizastar.
If your 1541 is device 9, press shift-space .
It takes about two minutes to load, and
you are then presented with the familiar
row and column layout of a spreadsheet.
Pressing tne Commodore key will present
you with the command menu. As with
Lotus, you can cursor (using spacebar)
and press RETURN, or simply type the
first letter of the required command.
The spreadsheet has extensive
capabilities: 64 thousand cells, individual-
36 TPUG Magazine
ly variable column widths, alphabetic or
numeric sorts, date calculations, two
table look-up functions, 32 built-in func-
tions, nine windows onto the sheet. But
that's not all. You can merge other
worksheets (or parts thereof) to over-
write cells, or to add or subtract with the
current cells, and merge word processing
files, disk directories or sequential files.
You can create bar and line graphs, ex-
ploded pie charts or 3-D multibar graphs.
You can also set cell display format, set
auto or manual recalculation, protect
cells, auto skip after cell entry, display
formulae or values, and even change
screen colors.
When you save your spreadsheet, you
also save current cursor location,
worksheet file name, active windows, ac-
tive graphing, 'recalc' and 'skipto' set-
tings, display values or formulae, global
format, colour settings, EXEC col-
umn/row, all printer menu options and
last commands used. Gee, this program
is smart! When you reload the file, you're
right where you left off.
The Database
Like the spreadsheet, the database could
stand alone and still be a front-runner.
The disk is divided up into half-sectors
referred to as 'slots'. An empty disk
(1541/4040 format) has a capacity of 1200
records, though in actual practice
Vizastar will use some slots for its own
purposes. Maximum record size is eight
thousand bytes, and maximum number of
fields is 64. You can have 15 files per
database and Vizastar keeps track of
which files belong to which database and
of your position in the three most recently
used files. You design your file layout on
the screen and you can have nine screens
per record. You can set formats or define
formulae for fields, use date calculations
and generate reports with selection
criteria. You can swap data back and
forth from the spreadsheet, import an ex-
ternal file, or export data for other uses
such as mail merging with your word pro-
cessor. Typical record access speed
(regardless of file size) is three seconds.
In actual practice, you will run out of
memory if you try to use fifteen files with
nine screens per file. Better you should
use a few files a time, and then switch to
the next group of files. The database's
flexibility is very satisfying. Working
with the spreadsheet and the database,
or even external files, is practically
seamless.
The EXEC Facility
All of the functions of Vizastar can be
automated using EXECs. An EXEC is
simply a list of keystrokes for Vizastar
to execute. Tremendous volumes of work
can be done with the touch of a key. EX-
ECs allow the use of labels, gotos,
prompts, user input, loops and decisions.
If you can write programs in BASIC
(even simple ones), you can write
Vizastar EXECs. This is where the real
power of the program is. You can even
load in a new spreadsheet and the EX-
EC will continue running, using the EX-
EC in the newly -loaded sheet!
EXECs can be used to manage data for
your own particular application, or simply
to spare you the tedium of a large number
of simple operations. They can be used to
enter data, process it, print reports, or
a combination of all three! If you can do
it with Vizastar, you can get Vizastar to
do it for you.
You're probably wondering what you
can't do. You can't use the disk's copy
command (c0:) to copy your files. There
is a program provided to backup your
data disks. Validating (collecting) the disk
is okay, however, and the command chan-
nel is available. You can't name a cell or
range of cells, you can't link separate
worksheets (directly), and there is no on-
line help facility (hooray!).
By leaving out the on-line help, more
program functionality could be included,
so be glad it's not there. Definitely do
take the time to read the manual
thoroughly. It's well worth the time it
takes. Unfortunately, there are some
discrepancies between what's written in
the tutorial guide and what actually hap-
pens when you follow it. When you get
to the staples in the tutorial guide, switch
to the manual, and thereafter switch back
and forth as necessary while you experi-
ment. You should also probably be
prepared to spend a week of evenings
with 'dummy' files, finding your way
around the program and the manual.
This is serious software with plenty of
capability. If you're looking for a spread-
sheet, take a look at Vizastar, If you're
looking for a database, look at Vizastar.
If you're looking for both, look no further.
Take the time to get to know it well, and
you will be richly rewarded. This is the
best system for storing and manipulating
data that I have yet seen. It's fast, easy
and powerful. I'm more likely to change
computers than to change software. Now
if they could just port Vizastar to the
IBM....
Vizastar: the information processor,
from Solid State Software, 1125 E.
Hillsdale Boidevard, Suite 104, Foster Ci-
ty, California 94404, (415) 341-5606. Price:
$119.97 (US). Cartridge, manual, copy-
=^=== Reviews
protected disk and backup disk. If you
purchase Vizastar and are not satisfied,
you can return it to the place of purchase
within fifteen days and receive a fid!
refund. □
1541 User's Guide:
A Complete Guide
to Commodore's
1541 Disk Drive
by Dr. Gerald Neufeld
from Datamost
Review by Ian A. Wright
Copyright e 1985 Ian A. Wright
Dr. Neufeld's latest book offers a soup-
to-nuts look at the famous (or infamous)
Commodore 1541 disk drive. Although
the book starts out at the level of how to
unpack and plug the 1541 into your
system, it rapidly accelerates into 'useful
stuff like explaining the working of each
disk command. This book is full of infor-
mation — for example, it offers four dif-
ferent ways to read the error channel in
immediate mode (supposedly not possi-
ble!). Another example shows how to save
a program as a sequential file and how
to load it back! There are lots of hints,
notes, warnings and explanations in the
thirteen chapters, five appendices, and
over four hundred pages of text.
The 1541 User's Guide is easier to read
than Inside Commodore DOS, co-
authored by the same person, but it is still
not a book for beginners. The 1541 User's
Guide is especially valuable for the in-
termediate programmer who wants to fix
or find out about disk drives — or for the
advanced programmer who wants to
brush up on the 'position bug' in DOS 2.6
relative files.
There are over fifty tutorial programs
to type in, ranging from a complete self-
modifying mail list to a program that will
let you align your drive. I think that
anyone involved in disk manipulation
would want to use some of the file repair
and checking programs — and all disk
users could learn from the materia! that
deals with disk drive maintenance.
Although not cheap at $25.95 (Cdn.),
the 1541 User's Guide should be on the
bookshelf of any VIC 20 or Commodore
64 owner who has a 1541 drive. The first
time you successfully resurrect a dam-
aged program by following the step-by-
step instructions, the book pays for itself.
□
January/February 1985 37
Reviews:
Dot's Nice.
by Paul Blair
Copyright ® 1985 Paul Blair
As the number of Commodore computers
has increased, so have sales of support
devices. Many users who started out with
cassette units have moved up to disk
drives. Others, whose needs go a bit fur-
ther still, are shopping around for
printers to complete their systems.
Why buy a printer? The reasons will
vary with every user — it may be word
processing for school, university or
business; spreadsheets, graphics; or, like
me, you might find it easier to edit
BASIC programs on paper, rather than
on the screen.
Given that Commodore themselves sell
'house brand* printers, it may seem sur-
prising that many prospective purchasers
have opted to buy non-Commodore
printers. Not only that, but they have at
the same time elected to pay out some
quite pocket-bending prices for the
privilege.
The reason for these choices is easy to
identify: there are many more companies
making or cloning high-quality printers
these days, and interfaces are becoming
cheaper and more versatile. It has to be
remembered that most of these printers
cost more, sometimes require more com-
plex techniques, and don't work with all
software. However, since the printers of-
fered by Commodore have had a sad and
sorry tale of interminable difficulties,
needing a string of revisions to be 'fix-
ed', what option did they have?
Now a sensible option does exist. It's
the new EPSON Homewriter 10, a 'plug
in and go' printer specifically designed to
work with the C-16, C-64, Plus/4 and
C-128 computers from Commodore.
Through the courtesy of Epson Australia,
I recently had the chance to review a pro-
totype model. (In Australia, the machine
goes under the name 'GX80'.)
Epson and Commodore are not
strangers to each other. For some years,
Epson supplied the mechanisms for Com-
modore's main printer lines. I still own
a 1978 vintage CBM 3022 printer, upon
which I make heavy demands. It has
never put a foot wrong. I could still buy
spare parts for it from Epson, if it did
have a spasm. More recently, the Epson
100 Mode! was chosen by IBM as the
main printer for the PC. Epson probably
held up to fifty per cent of the dot matrix
printer market for a while, which is no
mean feat. To put it simply, Epson has
a long and successful history of produc-
ing printers that are held in high renown.
The new printer aims to fill the gap left
by withdrawal of the Commodore
MPS801 from the market. Epson set out
to produce an 801 clone, but have gone
further than that, because they have in-
cluded additional print modes - including
NLQ.
Some explanations would be in order
here. Dot matrix printing is created by
moving a 'print head' across the page, fir-
ing a series of pins at an ink ribbon, which
leaves an impression on the paper behind
it. The pins are fired in rapid succession,
and the effect is to put enough ink dots
onto the paper to make readable
characters. The width of the characters,
the closeness of the dots when printed,
and the shape of the pins themselves all
add to (or subtract from) the final print
quality. As a general rule, the more pins
in the print head, the greater the printing
clarity and quality to be obtained. The
Homewriter 10 has nine wires, which per-
mits very clean printer characters, as well
as very refined graphics.
Let me describe the typical print modes
that are in use:
Normal print: the base case. Most dot
printers print ten characters per inch (no
metrics here yet). Thus, 80 columns of
print will use 8 inches of paper width.
Compressed print: useful for squeezing
more characters onto a line. The more
usual spacings fall between 12 and 17
characters per inch. Epson have chosen
to use 17, so 8 inches of print will give
136 characters across a page.
Double strike: doing it twice. The printer
makes one pass across the line; then
returns to its starting position (left or
right), and prints the line again. This
gives darker print, but there is a cor-
responding drop in output speed.
Emphasized print: doing it twice, but
with a minute movement of the print
head between strikes. This darkens and
slightly thickens the printed character. In
this mode, the print head makes only one
pass across the page . Print speed is only
slightly reduced from normal.
NLQ: the new buzz words, 'near letter
quality'. This is an attempt to permit dot
printers to be used for correspondence by
producing characters that closely approx-
imate typewriter quality. This mode also
requires two distinct passes of the print
head to give the requisite fine print
output .
Enlarged print: extra width characters,
usually double normal print, created on
one pass of the print head.
Reversed print: white characters printed
on a black ground , just as you can get on
your computer screen.
Bit mode: by sending the appropriate in-
formation to the print head, this mode
allows virtually any pattern or design of
dots to be printed.
I said earlier that the Homewriter 10 was
a clone of the MPS801. That was not
quite right. The 801 provided only nor-
mal, enlarged, bit and reversed print
modes. The Homewriter 10 provides all
the modes described above, greatly ex-
panding the versatility of the printer.
And it is possible to combine modes, so
that you can print double strike and em-
phasis together. Or you can combine com-
pressed print with enlarged print, to yield
a pitch of 8.5 characters to the inch.
In normal print mode, the Homewriter
10 operates bidirectionally . All the other
modes operate unidirectionally.
Physically. . .
The Homewriter 10 is a small, neat unit
housed in a plastic casing with a steel
base plate to provide rigidity. There is on-
ly one removable cover — at the front —
to expose the print head carriage for rib-
bon cartridge removal/replacement and
periodic cleaning. All other controls and
switches are externally accessible.
As supplied, the printer is friction feed,
so you may use cut paper (letterheads, for
example) if you wish. A cut sheet feeder
is likely to be available. A tractor feed
unit can be purchased if you use con-
tinuous stationery. This unit readily clips
and unclips from the top of the printer
in about two seconds. The only other ex-
ternal controls are a paper release lever,
and three press panel switches on the top
front right panel.
The panel also contains some idiot
lights to tell you about some non-useful
functions (like 'paper out' - as if you
need to have a light to tell you). These
switches have multiple functions. The ON
LINE (OL) switch applies and removes
38 TPUG Magazine
power, as required. The LF and FF
switches give line feeds and form feeds.
In combination, the OL and FF switches
permit print mode selection (normal, com-
pressed, NLQ, and so on).
At the rear, hidden by the feed paper,
are mini-switches that duplicate the
OL/FF controls on the top panel, plus a
few more — Device 4/5 selection , slash-
ed/plain zero character, the 'paper out'
buzzer mute, and page length (11 or 12
inch only). These are some of the more
useful control functions.
The printer is connected to the com-
puter (or, more likely, the disk drive) by
a serial cable that terminates in a plug-
in interface. The interface slides into a
deep slot at the rear left of the printer,
and requires no further connections. This
unit apparently contains the software
necessary to provide Commodore com-
patibility, plus the character set. The sort
of graphics characters that you see on
your screen will be printed out with your
listing, eliminating those '[CLR]' and
'[WHT]' (and so on) translations that
have become a (forced) standard. There
is no buffer in the cartridge, and it is ob-
vious that, as the C-64 can deliver
characters quite quickly, the interface
does slow things down a bit. Still, at 100
cps, the printer is no slouch.
Printer ribbons come in clip-in car-
tridges, and can be fitted without getting
mucky fingers. They seem to contain
heaps of ribbon, and should be good for
a lot of printing. The ribbon is arranged
as a Mobius strip, so it will alternate the
impact area with each lap of the ribbon.
Control codes
In this department, the Homewriter 10
matches the 801 perfectly . These control
codes are used from software to take care
of case switching (upper case/graphics, or
upper case/lower case mode), expanded
print on or off, print head positioning, line
spacing (6 or 9 lines per vertical inch),
horizontal positioning (tab), reverse
on/off, bit mode and bit image repeat.
Having made so many other improve-
ments over the 801, it was disappointing
that double strike, emphasized, com-
pressed and NLQ modes could not be con-
trolled from software. And the 6/9 lines
per inch restriction prevents production
of double spaced drafts.
What does it feel like?
Not to put too fine a point on it — very
nice. There is no feeling like being able
to plug in a printer, turn it on and literally
forget it. Once I remembered the bonus
gift of seria. bus lockup that is free with
every Commodore 64, and didn't switch
the Epson on until I needed it, the printer
and I had a pleasant, albeit brief, time
together. I would be happy to have one
permanently. It has very tidy print, with
well-formed characters and symbols; and
its multimode capabilities and versatili-
ty with different Commodore computers
is good.
Some minor problems
A couple of things bugged me, but the
sample unit was not a final production
model, and some of these things will sure-
ly be fixed by then.
Noise — the slim plastic housing leaves
little space for sound-deadening material .
I found it hard to hold a phone conversa-
tion while the printer was biffing away
two metres from me.
The paper bail (the bar plus rollers that
keeps the paper pressed against the main
roller) has no lever. This meant fumbling
into the innards, particularly during
paper loading.
A stick-on 'ruler' on the front panel
showing print spacings would be useful.
The paper bail has small notches every
ten standard characters, but as the
printer can also print at 8.5 and 17
characters per inch, they were not
universal.
These are not serious problems, but
they do slightly reduce the pleasure of us-
ing the printer. I hope Epson can build
in software control of character selection
in the near future.
Near letter quality
This is the big bonus. Not everyone can
afford a daisy wheel printer, or a daisy
wheel printer for correspondence and a
dot matrix printer for programs and
drafts. Many new printers offer NLQ to
make their products more widely appeal-
ing, and the marketplace has responded
enthusiastically by buying in big numbers.
No doubt Epson hopes to capture the at-
tention of some of those buyers.
As noted earlier, NLQ makes two
passes to provide a printing dot density
that makes each character stroke or
shape smoother. If you peer closely at the
printed characters, you will observe that
character formation looks rather rough.
Those characters using mainly vertical
and/or horizontal lines are fine. The
critical test is sloping lines, and there is
some jaggedness evident under a glass,
or even to the naked eye. By and large,
that small criticism would not be impor-
tant if Epson was the only printer on the
market offering NLQ. But there are
Rev lews
printers that do print smoother-sloping
lines, and prospective buyers (whose
thirst for NLQ is increasing every day)
can be expected to notice.
The Homewriter 10 in NLQ mode pro-
duces characters that are a little larger
than normal typewriter character size.
My old eyes found this quite pieasant, but
it has been commented on by people to
whom I showed print samples. And it em-
phasizes a bit more the NLQ's slightly
uneven print.
Graphics
I tried both Doodle and The Print Shop
and came up with some pretty pages of
banners, moire patterns and birthday
cards. Doodle was quick, The Print Shop
terribly slow (a function of the software).
I tried to print double strike to get bet-
ter clarity, but the switch settings seem-
ed to get overridden by the software. At
first, I thought the printer was being
reset by the program, but a few tests pro-
ved otherwise.
I should mention the extreme accuracy
of the printer with these programs. A
single line border came out as a straight
line, not a series of disjointed graphics
characters. Well done!
The bottom line
The Epson will be popular because it
plugs straight in, requires no set up,
wedges or hang-on doodads, and will run
with any software that recognizes Com-
modore printers (and that's most
everything on the market that uses a
printer).
The small business market will certain-
ly look at the Homewriter 10, because of
its no-fuss attributes. People new to com-
puting will also take a good long look,
because the Homewriter 10 overcomes
the major hassles of hooking up a Com-
modore computer to a printer. The mid-
dle ground printer is difficult to assess.
The lack of quality printers in this range
has forced users to learn to live with Cen-
tronics printers, and many will remain
committed to that standard. But they
should have a look at the Homewriter 10,
because many of its features will appeal
to them, too. I know I would consider one
for myself.
And a thank you. . .
Last, but not least, a 'thank you' to the
folks at Epson Australia, who arranged
the loan of the prototype. It takes
courage to let a 'warts and all'
preliminary model go out for review,
because there will always be changes
before product release.
January /February 1985 39
Revtewsj
Indiana Jones in
the Lost Kingdom
from Mindscape
Arcade-style game
for one or two players
for Commodore 64
$29.95 (US)
Review by Robert J. Sodaro
A fellow reviewer once remarked that a
good game was one he would play after
the review was written. For me, Indiana
Jones in the Lost Kingdom is one of
those games.
This is Indy's second entry into the
software market. The first — a stillborn
Atari 2600 game — failed , due to a lack
of rules and instructions, coupled with
poor gameplay. Mindscape's version suf-
fers only the former affliction, and should
succeed on its superior execution and pro-
duction values.
Designed to combine the action of
arcade hand/eye coordination with the
elements of an interactive strategy game,
Indiana Jones is an attempt to provide
interest even after hours of play. In this
aspect, the programmer succeeded.
However, in leaving out the instructions,
he left out perhaps the most crucial
element.
In place of rules, the following informa-
tion is offered; famed archaeologist
Indiana Jones must find an ancient art-
ifact from a lost kingdom, worth an in-
calculable fortune. Using the sparse clues
provided, and armed with only a mystical
cane, Indy wends his way through the
hazards of six rooms in his quest to find
the treasure before his archrival, Ivar
Reiss.
Perils include vampire bats, carnivor-
ous monsters, killer snowflakes, twisting
mazes and treacherous cliffs. The game
provides a set of clues for each room, as
well as a 'hint hotline' phone number,
should people really get stuck.
The clues are straightforward enough ,
but it will take even experienced gamers
quite some time to determine the action
in each room. For example, one room re-
quires you to scale steep cliffs while
avoiding bats. Another has you cavorting
around snowcapped mountains dodging
killer snowflakes, while a third involves
an underground maze with hidden hor-
rors and mysterious passages. Joystick
movement differs in each, and requires
gamers to 'relearn' how to play. (An ex-
ample: the fire button works in some
rooms but not in others.)
In keeping with the tone of the game,
I won't revea! the rules — except to say
that, once the logic of gameplay is deter-
mined, it's easy enough to discover
what's required in each room. The trick
is to determine how to perform the
various tasks without killing your seven
men.
The lure of the Lost Kingdom is strong,
but having to play 'blind' hours on end
seems to pose unnecessary difficulties.
'No documentation' may have sounded
good in the planning stages, but seems
to have wound up as an excuse not to
write engaging and coherent instructions.
Still , if you have the tenacity to muddle
through, there is much enjoyment to be
found while accompanying Indy on his
continued adventures.
Mindscape Inc., SbU Dundee Road, Nor-
thbrook, Illinois 60062. O
Sea Voyagers
from CBS Software
Educational program
for Commodore 64
Review by Ian A. Wright
Copyright ® 1985 Ian A. Wright
Sea Voyagers is an educational program
designed to teach the user about the ex-
plorers of the New Worid, and their ex-
ploits. Baffin, Tasman, Cabot and twenty-
seven other explorers — ranging from the
well-known (but wrongly-named) Colum-
bus to the lesser-known (but interesting)
Jacob Roggeveen — are presented in the
program's varied activities.
Each activity is a learning game, and
can be used by students from grade four
and up.
The package
The program comes in a neat plastic
bookcase with a twenty-seven page
manual, a disk, and a keyboard overlay
of soft plastic. The manual has instruc-
tions on loading and playing the games,
as well as tips on winning them.
Fourteen pages of 'Voyager Sketches'
covers the facts about each of the thirty
New World explorers of the fifteenth to
eighteenth centuries. An explanatory sec-
tion about earlier and later explorers, the
reasons for exploring, the difficulties ex-
plorers faced, the improvements that
resulted from their journeys, and a
bibliography with twenty-three refer-
ences round out one of the best software
manuals I've seen.
The reviewers
The program was tested on a friend's two
boys, aged eight and ten. Both had little
knowledge of the New World explorers
before they tried out Sea Voyagers,
beyond knowing Columbus' name. They
now know the names of most of the ex-
plorers (although they may not be able to
pronounce them correctly!) and they
know one or two facts about each of
them. They also know which country each
explorer sailed from, where he went, and
the approximate year of his voyage.
Both the graphics and the sound of Sea
Voyagers are excellent. The 'Explorer
Profiles' plot their information on a world
map focused on North America. Some of
the world land mass (India, for example)
is missing from this map, but that results
from the need to focus the map on the
New World.
Sea Voyagers could be improved by
adding a screen dump of the 'Explorer
Profiles' but, considering the diversity of
printers and their incompatibilities, it is
easy to understand why this feature has
not been implemented.
The boys would also like to have the op-
tion of additional explorers (like Print
Shop's extra graphics disks) to expand
the game from its current North
American bias. They really appreciated
the keyboard overlay, however, because
it simplified the running of each of the ac-
tivities in Sea Voyagers, letting them
concentrate on the game.
The activities
Explorer Profile: Provides the facts about
each of the thirty explorers and their
voyages, shown on a map of the world.
Who Goes There?: Guess a mystery ex-
plorer from up to five facts, given one at
a time. The more facts you need, the
fewer points you gain.
Explorer Mix: Gives three facts and three
explorers that are scrambled. You
unscramble the information to receive
points.
Explorer Match: This is like a poker
game. The suits in the easy version are
the countries that the explorers sailed to
find. The centuries when the voyages
took place, the regions explored, or the
countries sailed for, are the suits in the
harder version of this game.
You can play against other people, in-
dividually or in teams, or play agaipst the
computer. Be careful of the computer op-
ponent — it's good! Overall rating — very
good to excellent. □
40 TPUG Magazine
HRT Super-Res
Graphics Board
from High Res
Technologies
An internally-mounted,
high-resolution
graphics card
for PETs and SuperPETs
Review by Tom Stiff
In my work, I accumulate a lot of data;
data that must eventually be analysed. As
anyone who has had to handle large
amounts of data will attest, the best way
to begin to understand the meaning of
large blocks of related data is to display
it graphically. The old adage "a picture
is worth a thousand words" never held
more truth than in the field of data
analysis.
In a single night's observing at the
York University Observatory, I can easily
accumulate more than a megabyte of data
in the form of digitized one dimensional
stellar spectra, or a few dozen megabytes
in the form of two dimensional digitized
astronomical images. Producing a hard-
copy of these images is very expensive
and time consuming. A fast graphics ter-
minal seemed to be the best solution , and
I began a search for a PET or SuperPET
graphics package.
Months of letter writing, phoning and
searching through back issues of every
Commodore-related magazine failed to
produce any satisfactory results. In the
Spring of 1984, there were three
manufacturers of hi-res boards, all for
65xx based machines {designed for PETs,
but not for SuperPETs); all were priced
over 600 dollars (US); and none offered
a screen resolution any better than the
C-64.
Each system also had serious design
flaws that made them unsuitable. One
used up a lot of the PET's memory,
another required major hardware
modifications and yet another limited the
PET's capabilities by redefining some of
the PET's BASIC keywords to incor-
porate graphics commands.
At the 1984 Annual TPUG meeting, I
discovered High Res Technology's booth,
and described my graphics needs to Dan
Deconinck. He seemed optimistic about
designing a suitable graphics board. That
summer, Dan contacted Avygdor Moise
(of OS-9 fame, and also author of PET-
COM) at York University, for details
about the 6809 side of the SuperPET.
Since my graphics needs were relatively
modest, Dan also asked Avy for addi-
tional ideas and suggestions. Gradually,
a prototype graphics card began to
emerge.
During the next year, two prototype
boards were produced. Each was
demonstrated at a meeting of the
SuperPET User's Group, and each time
ideas for enhancements were solicited.
Ideas thrashed around during these
meetings led to further board revisions
and improvements. In the early spring of
1985, HRT felt that their card was ready
to 'field test'. Accordingly, they installed
their graphics card in my SuperPET.
The graphics card was fully
transparent and did not interfere with
any PET functions, nor did the card use
any of the PET's memory. In other
words, with the card installed, I was total-
ly unaware of its existence. I could tack
graphics sub-routines onto any existing
program and the program would run
perfectly!
I have been using an early version of
an HRT graphics card for about ten
months now, and I am extremely pleas-
ed with its operation. I use the graphics
capabilities of my SuperPET to analyse
stellar spectra. A typical spectrum (call-
ed a frame) is 500 pixels in length. The
spectra are taken with a silicon-
intensified television videcon (a sort of
fancy digital TV system). All of the obser-
vatory's instrumentation, by the way, is
controlled by an ordinary PET 2001.
The data are written onto a floppy disk
for temporary storage, then handed over
to a VAX 8600 for large-scale 'number-
crunching'. I then download the reduced
data from the VAX to my SuperPET, for
graphics display. The graphics program
I have written is entirely in BASIC, and
has been compiled, using PETSpeed.
It takes about thirty seconds to create
a full screen image consisting of over 600
line segments. Most of this time is taken
by the SuperPET, to execute an auto-
scaling subroutine to a VAX 780 system
using a VT100 terminal and operating
with norma] daytime user -loading. To
generate an equivalent hard copy
graphics display takes about twenty
minutes, using an H-P plotter! Further-
more, the HRT card allows me to overlay
an infinite number of frames for com-
parison if I need to do so, or to simply
display them, one at a time. The images
can be scrolled off the screen, if I wish
to plot more data; and instantly scrolled
back, if I want to view them again.
With the birth of Super-OS/9, addi-
tional enhancements were made last sum-
Reviews
mer to increase the graphics board's
capabilities, and to further increase the
screen resolution. Screen resolution is
700 pixels on 80 column PETs, and 640
by 200 on 40 column PETs. But — and
this is a nice feature — the total resolu-
tion is 1024 by 512 pixels, and the screen
can be scrolled in all directions.
The graphics card is easily installed in-
to any PET or SuperPET. It requires no
external power supply, no soldering, and
no other hardware modifications. The
board simply plugs into the main board's
6502 slot, and the 6502 chip is moved to
the graphics board. It works equally well
on either the 6502 side or 6809 side of the
SuperPET and — as if that weren't
enough — it is perfectly compatible with
OS-9. The icing on the cake is that OS-9
users can also use the graphics card's
memory as a 64K RAM disk.
The main problem with this card is that
software is scarce. You will have to write
your own — in machine language, if you
want it to be fast. I have a feeling that
this will not be a problem for long, since
there are several users that I personally
know of (and probably many others) that
are already developing graphics utilities
that will be placed in the public domain,
via TPUG.
I have also heard rumours that PH.D.
Associates will be marketing a version of
PETCOM which will support VT 100 and
maybe VT240 graphics with HRT's
graphics board. Perhaps this upgrade will
also be available to registered PETCOM
users for a modest fee. (Are you listen-
ing PH.D. Associates?)
This card is the finest and best design-
ed piece of graphics hardware on the
market today for any microcomputer —
and at any price. This little card has many
excellent features and, in some areas, it
out-does the illustrious Amiga. For exam-
ple, I use the graphics card to produce a
'plotting window' on the top two thirds
of the screen while I simultaneously use
the bottom third of the screen to edit pro-
grams, as well as to display numerical
results as they are being calculated. In
fact, the normal text screen can overlay
the graphics screen. I can choose to erase
either the text or graphics, or both.
If you want to breathe new life into
your old PET and re -kindle some of the
enthusiasm you had the day you first
lifted it lovingly out of its styrofoam
cradle, this addition might be just what
you're looking for.
The HRT Super-Res Graphics Board,
from High Res Technologies, 16 Engishlvy
Way, Toronto M2H 3M4. Price $200.00
(US), $225 (Cdn). □
January/February 1985 41
Reviewsj
Karateka
from Broderbund
Graphics adventure
game for the C-64
Review by Ajay Jindal
Returning home after years of study
under a master of karate, you find your
village burned to the ground. Yourfi-iends
and family are scattered, your bride-to-
be stolen byAkuma. the imrlord whose op-
pressive shadow has darkened your
village since before you were born. . .
This is the scenario you find in Karateka.
Your mission is to penetrate Akuma's
mountain fortress, to rescue your belov-
ed Princess Mariko. The only weapon you
have is your knowledge of karate. You
must defeat Akuma's warriors, and
ultimately Akuma himself, to achieve
your goal .
As the game starts, you have just climb-
ed to the summit of the mountain upon
which Akuma's fortress is situated. There
you meet the first of the palace guards.
The graphics of this program are stun-
ning. The background scenery is in a 3-D
perspective, and all the figures on the
screen move very smoothly — as well as
casting shadows, too! These graphic ef-
fects give the game a movie -like quality.
If you ever want to show off your com-
puter's abilities to your friends, this is the
program with which to do it.
You control your man through either
keyboard or joystick. You can punch,
kick, run, bow and advance. The initial
response is quite quick, but the actual
movement is slow. The program has a
'joystick buffer', so that if you keep press-
ing the button while the current move is
being completed, it will al! be
remembered, and the moves executed.
All in all, the controls aren't difficult to
master, and there aren't that many to
remember, anyway.
After defeating an opponent, you must
run as far you as can into the fortress,
until the next warrior blocks your path.
The warriors are supposed to get tougher
as you go. I have found that this just
means that they can take more hits. It is
easy to defeat them after your sixth game
because they move in patterns, and aren't
very 'intelligent'. As you near the end,
you must fight Akuma's eagle, then
Akuma himself (a little tougher than his
men). If you kill them both, you get to hug
Princess Mariko. That's it. No next level.
No score. Not even a time or rating. Just
a message saying that there will be a next
time. The end is very disappointing.
This game offers very little challenge.
There are a few easy puzzles along the
way, but once you have figured them all
out, there is no motivation to play again
because there is no way to measure your
success. You either finish, or you don't.
At first glance, this seems like a great
game, but I got bored with it quickly. Be
wary before you lay out the cash for this
one. Q
Adding Power To
Your Commodore 64
by Vahe Guzelimian
and Steve Gates
Book ($14.95 US) and
support disk ($15.00 US)
for Commodore 64
Review by Dave Powell
Another of the 'Everything you wanted
to know about the C-64' books? Yes, but
with a twist — this one leaves out most
of the stuff you didn't want to know! Buy-
ing this book is better than trying to
organize every tip given over the last
three years in TPUG Magazine (and
maybe several others) in a logical order.
It goes beyond the early attempts —
nothing more than rewrites of the Com-
modore reference books — and gives
clear explanations, good examples and
alternate ways of doing things. It covers
both software and hardware, to the ex-
tent of including (for example) hardware
diagrams for video improvement, and for
a reset switch.
The support disk contains some of the
examples explained in the book, as well
as a set of utilities. There's a pretty stan-
dard BASIC tool-kit, Supermon, a DOS
wedge, Backup 1541, a disk cataloguer,
a DATA writer and disk utilities. Some
of these are public domain, with
acknowledgement of the original authors
(good to see). The cataloguer shows start
and end addresses — useful for machine
language programmers. Otherwise,
there's nothing here that isn't in the
TPUG library already. The advantage of
having the book is the excellent documen-
tation provided for these utilities.
This book is well written, informative
and useful. It has a glossary (helpful for
beginners), an index, and not too many
appendices — that is, it doesn't reproduce
the last two hundred pages of the Com-
modore Reference Guide 1 .
Ollie's Follies
from American
Eagle Software
Arcade game
for Commodore 64
Review by Michael Quigley
This is a well-designed program that com-
bines elements of 'jumping' games like
Donkey Kong with the nasty robots of
Impossible Mission. Your object is to get
through various obstacles in twenty-four
rooms. Robots aside, hazards such as
drainpipes, lightning bolts, lasers, mov-
ing steps, elevators, balance beams and
fans impede your progress. In order to
escape to the next screen, you have to
open the exit door (the path to which is
fraught with more peril) with a key.
When I first started playing the game,
I was intimidated by the prospect of
twenty-four screens with no apparent
bonuses, so I turned it over to my testing
staff. They soon discovered that pro-
gressing to the end of Level 4 resulted
in a clue to starting the game at the fifth
level; and also that logical deduction led
to another clue, which made it possible
to start at Level 9.
The game has plenty of imaginative
touches, as welt as a few peculiar ones.
In order to defeat the robots, you have
to jump up and touch the 'energizer',
which is like a giant fright wig. Its effect
lasts for a few seconds while you are
wearing it.
The ultimate object of the game is a
mystery to me. However, for the arcade
game junkie, its numerous challenges will
provide hours of amusement... and
frustration. □
42 TPUG Magazine
TPUG BBS
The NEW telephone number is:
(416) 273-6300
Operating hours:
24 hours per day
7 days per week
The password is . . .
FLUFFY
Products Received
Presented by Astrid Kumas
The following products have been received
by TPUG Magazine in recent weeks.
Please note that these descriptions are
based on the manufacturers' own
announcements, and are not the result of
evaluation by TPUG Magazine.
King Chip
« King Chip from XYLYX Computer
Entertainment Ltd., 20 Torbay Road,
Markham, Ontario L3R 1G7. Price:
$39.95 (Cdn.)
King Chip comes in a heavy box with a
mysterious description on it: "The com-
puter game that doesn't require a com-
puter". This is sufficient to make anyone
open the box — revealing 675 cards with
questions and answers, six playing
boards, forty-two chips, two plastic board
connections and one die. As you may have
guessed by now, King Chip is a trivia-
type game, modelled after Trivial Pur-
suits, that tests players' knowledge of
computers and high technology. To be
more precise, the categories covered in
this trivia contest are as follows: Data
Communications, History and Current
Events, Hardware, Jargon and
Acronyms, Potpourri and Software. The
question and answer cards are divided in-
to five levels of difficulty.
SG-10C Upgrade Kit
SG-10C Special Edition Kit from Star
Micronics, Inc., 200 Park Avenue, Suite
3510, New York, New York 10166-0186.
There is no charge for the kit:.
Here is some good news for SG-10C
printer owners. Star Micronics has
recently announced the SG-10C Special
Edition Kit to expand the versatility of
their Commodore-dedicated SG-10C
printer.
The kit contains two ROM (Read-Only-
Memory) chips to be installed into the
printer. They provide the following new
features: near letter quality, italics,
double-density bit-image graphics,
superscripts and subscripts, double
strike, variable line spacing, and
underlining.
A small eight-page manual gives all the
necessary installation instructions, and
the escape codes to select the new
features.
For general information about the
SG-10C Special Edition Kit, call the
nearest Star regional sales office: New
York Sales 212-986-6760, Chicago Sales
312-773-3717, Los Angeles Sales
714-586-8850. For technical data, call
Star's technical support headquarters at
714-768-4340.
Kernal Tool Kit
COMPUTE! 'S VIC 20 and Commodore <?4
Tool Kit: The Kernal, by Dan Heeb,
published by COMPUTE! Books, PO
5406, Greensboro, North Carolina 27403.
Price: $16.95 (US).
This 429-page book, a companion to an
earlier volume covering BASIC, gives a
thorough description of the built-in Ker-
nal routines that make up the operating
system of the C-64 and VIC 20 com-
puters. The book details Kernal operation
in ten chapters covering NMI and IRQ in-
terrupts, system reset and the i/o
routines. □
C-128 Software
The C-128 is getting more and more
support from software companies.
• Timeworks has announced the
release of the upgraded Word Writer
128, a word processing system that
works in C-128 mode with either a 40
or an 80 column monitor. Additional
features include on-screen highlighting,
right margin justification, superscripts
and subscripts, headers and footers,
and speed keys for more experienced
users. Word Writer 128 includes an
85,000-word spelling checker. This
word processor can be used by itself,
or with Timeworks Data Manager 128,
Swiftcalc 128 and Sylvia Porter's
Personal Financial Planner. The
retail price for each of these programs
is $69.95 (US).
• Abacus Software has released
BASIC-128 , a compiler that Abacus
says will speed up BASIC programs
from 5 to 35 times. The program com-
piles to either 8510 machine code, p-
Still Sizzling. . .
code, or a combination of both. It uses
integer and formula optimizing techni-
ques, and is said to be completely com-
patible with BASIC 7.0. Suggested
retail price is $59.95 (US).
• Abacus has also announced the
release of the C-128 version of its
Chartpak program , a package for pro-
fessional charts and graphs (see Prod-
ucts Received, November 1985). Chart-
pak gives the user three times the
resolution of the earlier C-64 version:
now the entire chart or graph can be
viewed, and the screen can be scrolled
to see the higher resolution detail. With
the extra memory of the C-128, more
data can be entered also. Suggested
retail price: $39.95 (US).
Superforth 64
Parsec Research has released Super-
forth 64 + Artificial Intelligence
(AI), an integrated programming en-
vironment for C-64 and C-128 users.
Superforth, an enhanced version of the
standard Forth language, is the core of
a package also including AI, Graphics
I/O and Extended Math modules.
According to Parsec, the i/o program
is engineered to offer complete com-
mand of all RS 232 communications,
printer/plotter word sets, and
KoalaPad graphics. The Extended
Math module includes matrices and
multidimensional lattices, an algebraic
expression evaluator, automatic scien-
tific notation, floating point and
' trigonometric expressions.
The price of the package is $99.00
(US). It is available from Parsec
Research, 41805 Albrae Street, Fre-
mont, California 94538, (800)-633-6335.
For Ham Operators
In the last Products Received section
(December 1985) we printed an an-
nouncement about Jim Grubbs' Com-
mand Post. Unfortunately, the address
of the publisher was not included. We
apologize for this oversight. The ad-
dress is: QSKY Publishing, P.O. Box
3042 Springfield, Illinois 62708. D
January/February 1985 43
Calendar of TPUG Events
Meeting Places
Brampton Chapter: Brampton Public Library, Four Corners
Branch, 65 Queen St., on the second Thursday of the month,
at 7:30 pm.
Business Chapter: TPUG Office, 101 Duncan Mill Rd., Suite
G-7, Don Mills, on the third Tuesday of the month, at 7:30 pm.
Central Chapter: The Central Chapter will no longer be
meeting.
COMAL Chapter: York Public Library, 1745 Eglinton Ave. W.
(just east of Dufferin) on the fourth Thursday of the month, at
7:30 pm in the Story Hour Room (adjacent to the auditorium).
Commodore 128 Chapter: TPUG Office, 101 Duncan Mill Rd.,
Suite G-7, Don Mills, on the first Wednesday of the month, at
7:30 pm.
Commodore 64 Chapter: York Mills CI, 490 York Mills Rd. (east
of Bayview) on the last Monday of the month, at 7:30 pm in the
cafetorium.
Communications Chapter: TPUG Office, 101 Duncan Mill Rd.,
Suite G-7, Don Mills, on the fourth Thursday of the month, at
7:30 pm.
Eastside Chapter: Dunbarton High School (go north on Whites
Rd. from the traffic lights at Highway 2 and Whites Rd. to next
traffic lights; turn left to parking lots) on the second Monday
of the month, at 7:30 pm.
FEBRUARY
MON
TUES
WED
THURS
3
4
VIC 20
5
C-128
6
10
Eastside
11
Hardware
12
13
Brampton
17
New Users
18
Business
19
SuperPET
20
Westside
24
Commodore 64
25
26
27
COMAL
Communications
Hardware Chapter: York Public Library, 1745 Eglinton Ave.
W. (just east of Dufferin) on the second Tuesday of the month,
at 7:30 pm in the Story Hour Room (adjacent to the auditorium).
New Users Chapter: TPUG Office, 101 Duncan Mill Rd., Suite
G-7, Don Mills, on the third Monday of the month, at 7 pm.
SuperPET Chapter: York University, Petrie Science Building
(check in room 340). Use north door of Petrie to access building.
On the third Wednesday of the month, at 7:30 pm.
VIC 20 Chapter: York Public Library, 1745 Eglinton Ave. W.
(just east of Dufferin), on the first Tuesday of the month, at 7:30
pm in the auditorium.
Westside Chapter: Clarkson Secondary School, Bromsgrove
just east of Winston Churchill Blvd., on the third Thursday of
the month, at 7:30 pm.
TPUG makes every effort to ensure thai meetings take place when
and where scheduled. However, unforeseen problems may occa-
sionally arise that lead to a particular meeting being changed
or cancelled The TPUG meetings line (U5-9040) is the best source
of fully up-to-date information on meeting times, and should be
consulted.
Are you interested in organizing some other interest group in
the Greater Toronto area? Please let the club office know, by mail,
phone or TPUG bulletin board, D
MARCH
MON
TUES
WED
THURS
3
4
VIC 20
5
C-128
6
10
Eastside
11
Hardware
12
13
Brampton
17
New Users
18
Business
19
SuperPET
20
Westside
24
Commodore 64
25
26
27
COMAL
Communications
44 TPUG Magazine
Bulletin Board
Microsearch
MicrosearchS, a comprehensive database containing
more than 20,000 abstracts about personal computers and
related products, is now available on the CompuServe In-
formation Sen/ice.
The abstracts include product reviews from more than 200 ;
microcomputer-delated periodicals,:; las well as; product-
literature from more than 4,500 manufacturers and software
publishers. The information provided refers to product
availability and compatibility, software application and pro-
duct evaluation.
Microsearch is organized into three categories:
• Software Information
• Hardware/Services/Accessories Information
• Directory of Manufacturers
All types of software products, including business and pro-
fessional applicatons, games and home software are .
covered in Software Information. Hardware/Services/Ac- :
cessories Information includes everything from modems to
online services. The Directory of Manufacturers provides
company names, addresses, contacts' names and toll-free
telephone numbers when possible.
Subscribers can accessthe CompuServe Information Ser-.
vice with a personal computer, terminal, or communicating
word processor; communications software; and a modem.
Also, in addition to the regular CompuServe connect rates,
Microsearch will carry a $10 per hour surcharge.
Kids Computer News
Thomas F. Trocco, who hosts 'Sam's Computer School'
on WNYC-FM Kids America, announces a new national com-
puter newsletter. Entitled Kids Computer News, it features
reviews of computer software by Kids America listeners, as
vveil as. the latest computer news.
-Kids Computer News is a monthly, publication, and the ■
subscription cost is $5.00 (US) per year. For more informa-
tion about the newsletter, contact: Thomas F. Trocco,
Science Dept. Chair, St. Hilda's & St, Hugh's School, 619
West 114th Street, New York, JsJew York 10025,
(212)-666-9871.
Racter
As this issue's feature is Artificial Intelligence, we would
like to remind you of Racter, whose book of poems,
dialogues and limericks was favourably reviewed in our
March 1985 issue. If Racter's name doesn't ring a bell, let
us tell you that Racter is the first computer program to write
a book. Racter is now available for IBM PC and Apple com :
puters, including the Macintosh.
The number of Racter fans has been growing ever since
the program appeared on the market. To let them share their
experiences with Racter, the Institute of Artificial Insanity has
been formed. Mindscape, Racter's publisher, claims that
the Institute's membership is expanding rapidly. Let's hope
that a Commodore version (perhaps for the Amiga) will come
out soon, so that new inmates may. be admitted to the
Institute. □
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♦ ♦♦♦♦J************************
80 COLUMN OUTPUT
FROM YOUR C-128
USING A COMPOSITE
MONITOR
ANGEL INTERFACE
Plugs into G128 RGBI port
to produce an 80 column monochrome
display suitable for connection
to a 1701 or most other colour
or monochrome composite
style monitors.
Eliminates the need to purchase
an expensive RGBI monitor
to obtain 80 columns in monochrome
applications such as word
processing, telecommunications
or spread sheets.
Connects to your monitor
using the video cable supplied
with the C-128.
ONLY $19.95 CANADIAN
Including Shipping and handling.
THE B.E.S.T. CORPORATION
2446 Cawthra Rd., B-4, U-9
Mississauga, Ontario.
L5A 3K6 (416)848-2650
Ontario Residents add 7%
Provincial Sales Tax.
Allow 3 weeks for delivery.
Dealer inquiries welcome.
*****************************
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Classifieds
This space is for the ads of TPUG members. Wanted or for
sale items only. Cost is 25 cents per word. No dealer ads
accepted.
For Sale: Commodore SuperPET, 4040 dual disk drive, 8010
modem, Wordpro 4 + , Visicalc, Flexfile database and lots of other
software. $2100.00 or best offer. (416)-446-1035.
WANTED: 8032, 8050 or 8250. Call Maria (416)-364-9020.
For Sale: PET 4032 with 80 columns, 4040 disk drive, 4022 printer.
Excellent condition. $1200.00 (Cdn.) Call (31 3)-68 7-0236.
January/February 1985 45
Ask Someone Who Knows
If you enjoy Jim Strasma's many books, and his
articles in this and other magazines, you'll be glad
he also edits his own highly-acclaimed computer
magazine, now in its sixth year of continuous
publication. Written just for owners of Com-
modore's many computers, each Midnite Software
Gazette contains hundreds of brief, honest
reviews.
Midnite also features timely Commodore'
news, hints and articles, all organized for instant
reference, and never a wasted word. Whether you
are just beginning or a long-time hobbyist, each
issue will help you and your computer to work
together effectively.
A six issue annual subscription is $23. To
subscribe, or request a sample issue, just write:
MIDNITE SOFTWARE GAZETTE
P.O. Box 1747
Champaign, IL 61820
You'll be glad you did!
DON'T FEAR THE TAX FORMS!
If you live in Ontario, TAX-85 is one of the most
comprehensive, PERSONAL Income Tax
programs ever written for Commodore systems.
If you are confused by: T4s, T5s and the many
other slips, tax rules or tax forms, then TAX-85
is just for you!
Tax-85 asks VERY SIMPLE QUESTIONS and
then makes all the decisions to give your
MAXIMUM REFUND, It produces completed tax
forms, on screen or printer, that resemble the
original. You simply copy the numbers to the pink
government forms.
Send $23.75 (includes tax and postage) to:
-Specify CBM or C64-
R.W. Dray & Co
P.O. BOX 1025
PETERBOROUGH, ONT.
K9J 7A5
Super-OS/9* Is Here
TPUG has implemented the popular 6809 operating
system OS-9* on the SuperPET. Super-OS/9 greatly
expands the software availability and the hardware
capability of the SuperPET while preserving access
to the Waterloo languages and programs.
The cost of Super-OS/9 to club members is $210
(Cdn) (plus $10 shipment/handling Ontario residents
add 7% PST), which includes the cost of a hardware
modification that will not affect the normal operation
of your SuperPET, installation instructions and the
operating system disks.
To obtain your copy please send your cheque or
money order to:
TPUG
101 Duncan Mill Rd., Suite G-7
Don Mills, Ontario
Canada M3B 1Z3
What does Super-OS/9 offer?
• A true disk operating with features found on UNIX*
systems and on the AMIGA.
• Multi-tasking and multi-user capability.
■ Hierarchical directory structure with time/date stamps.
• Programmable file access privileges for increased
security.
Extensive software is available for OS-9, most
of which runs on Super-OS/9.
Super-OS/9 VI. 1 includes an assembler, editor,
symbolic debugger, communication software and ter-
minal emulation package. Available languages include
BASIC09, CIS COBOL, Fortran 77, Pascal, Lisp, C
and others. Application software include word proces-
sors, spelling checkers, data bases and spread sheet
programs.
TPUG has acquired public domain software and
will assist users in the conversion of commercial soft-
ware to Commodore format.
Portability and Expandability
• Super-OS/9 programs will run on all OS-9 based
computers (like the CoCo).
• Super-OS/9 will support standard disk drives (IBM
format) and the Hi-res graphics board (700 x 300 dots).
• Super-OS/9 software is C compatible with OS-9 68k
and AT&T Unix system V.
For further information call TPUG Inc. at
(416) 445-4524, ask for Bruce.
NOTE: If you own a 3 board SuperPET and wish to
acquire Super-OS/9, please call TPUG before, order-
ing Super-OS/9, for info about a hardware fix to a
design error in your SuperPET computer.
Super-OS/9 is a trade mark of TPUG and Avygdor Moise.
OS-9 is a trademark of Mieroware and Motorola.
UNIX is a trade mark of Bell Laboratories.
Expand
Past
Maximum
Capacity!
The Tech/News Journal Fa Commodore Comnuters
At better book stores everywhere! Or 6 issues delivered to your door
for just $15.00 (Overseas $21 U.S. Air Mail $40 U.S.)
The Transactor. 500 Steeles Ave. Milton, Ontario. L9T3P7.
416 878-8438
Also check out The Transactor Disk and The Complete Commodore
Inner Space Anthology - to us, expansion knows no limits!
C64 +C128
Provincial
Payroll
A complete Canadian Payroll
System for Small Business.
• 50 employees per disk (1541)
• Calculate and Print Journals
• Print Cheques
• Calculate submissions summary
for Revenue Canada
• Accumulates data and prints T4s
• Also available for 4032, 8032,
PC-10 Commodore computers
Fully Supported
Available from your Commodore dealer
DislriEuTed by
ICROCOMPUTER SOLUTIONS
170 The Donway West, Suite 401
Don Mills, Ontario M3B 2G3
Tel: (416) 447-4811
COMSPEC
Authorized Commodore dealer since 1978.
866 Wilson Ave., Downsview
(Between Dufferin & Keele)
Call our 24 hour B.B.S.
633-0185
S S I SOFTWARE
Colonial
Conquest
Computer
Ambush
$44.95
Kampfgruppe
$64.95
$49.95
Operation
Market
Garden
$59.95
S59.95
AMIGA
NEW AMIGA
NOW ON
DISPLAY
AND THE
LATEST
SOFTWARE
10 : .- discount to TPUG members
on Software, boohs and accessories, (excluding sale items)
• Hardware • Software • Books •
• Accessories • Service • Rental •
Phone orders only accepted
Visa / MasterCard / Amex
COMSPEC
COMPUTER - COMMUNICATIONS - SERVICE
866 Wilson Ave. Downsview. Ontario
(416) 633-5605
Bayside
B.E.S.T. Corporation
COMAL Users Group, USA
Comspec Communications
Computer Rentals
R.W. Dray & Co.
John Duntop & Associates
Electronics 2001
Micro Solutions
Midnite Software Gazette
Mimic Systems Inc.
Programmers Guild Products
Soft-Mail
TPUG (Disk Subscriptions)
TPUG (OS/9)
TPUG (OS/9 Software)
The Transactor
Wilanta Arts
17
45
15
47
12
46
31
3
47
46
BC
35
IFC
IBC
46
35
47
17
TPUG Magazine
Distributors
Dealers: If you would like to carry TPUG Magazine in
your store, you may order from any one of the following
distributors:
CANADA
Compulit Distributors, Port Coquitlam, BC 604-464-1221
USA
Prairie News, Chicago, IL 312-384-5350
Levity Distributors, North Hollywood, CA 818-506-7958
Whole Life Distributors, Englewood, CO 303-761-2435
M-6 Distribution, Houston, TX 713-778-3002
The Homing Pigeon, Elgin, TX 512-276-7962
Northeast News Distributors, Kingston, NY 914-382-2000
Fred Bay News Co., Portland, OR 503-228-0251
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Micro-PACE, Champaign, IL 800-362-9653
TPUG Contacts
TPUG OFFICE 416/445-4524
TPUG BBS 416/273-6300
TPUG MEETINGS INFO 416/445-9040
Board of Directors
President
Chris Bennett
c/o 416/445-4524
Vice-President
Gerry Gold
416/225-8760
Vice-President
Carl Epstein
416/492-0222
Recording Sec .
Doris Bradley
416/782-7320
David Bradley
c/o 416/445-4524
Richard Bradley
c/o 416/445-4524
Gary Croft
416/727-8795
Mike Donegan
416/639-0329
John Easton
416/251-1511
Keith Falkner
416/481-0678
Louise Redgers
416/447-4811
General Manager
Bruce Hampson
416/445-4524
TPUG Magazine
Publisher
Bruce Hampson
416/445-4524
Editor
Nick Sullivan
416/445-9865
Assistant Editor
Tim Grantham
416/445-9865
Production Manager
Astrid Kumas
416/445-9865
Ad Sales Reps
Hunter Nichols Inc
416/439-4140
Meeting Co-ordinators
Brampton Chapter
Jackie Bingley
c/o 416/445-4524
C-64 Chapter
Louise Redgers
416/447-4811
COMAL Chapter
Donald Dal ley
416/742-3790
Victor Gough
416/677-8840
Communications
Darrell Grainger
c/o 416/445-4524
Eastside Chapter
Judith Willans
c/o 416/445-4524
Nina Nanan
c/o 416/445-4524
Hardware Chapter
Frank Hutchings
c/o 416/445-4524
SuperPET Chapter
Gerry Gold
416/225-8760
VIC 20 Chapter
Anne Gudz
c/o 416/445-4524
Westside Chapter
John Easton
416/251-1511
Al Farquh arson
519/442-7000
Business Chapter
Louise Redgers
416/447-4811
New Users Chapter
Louise Redgers
416/447-4811
C-128 Chapter
Adam Herst
c/o 416/445-4524
Librarians
COMAL
Victor Gough
416/677-8840
PET
Mike Donegan
416/639-0329
SuperPET
Bill Dutfield
416/224-0642
VIC 20
Richard Best
c/o 416/445-4524
Commodore 64
Derick Campbell
416/492-9518
B-128
Paul Aitchison
c/o 416/445-4524
Amiga
Mike Donegan
416/639-0329
C-128
Adam Herst (CP/M) c/o 416/445-4524
TPUG Bulletin Board
Sysop (voice, weekdays) Sylvia Gallus
e/o416/896-1446
Assistant Sysop
Steve Punter
c/o41 6/896-1 446
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□ Mastercard
□ Visa
D Money Order
Signature
Amount %
Currency □ Can. □ US
Credit Card #
Expiry Date
Type of Computer
D C 64
□ VIC 20
□ PET □ 4040 D 8050
D SUPERPET (10 disks) □ 4040 D 8050
a C128 (1541 only)
D MS/DOS
□ AMIGA (3W) (7 disks) □
■* 1
HOW TO GET
OVER $2000 WORTH OF NEW
CAPABILITIES FOR YOUR
COMMODORE 64
OR $599
The Spartan™ is the Apple'" II + emulator for your Commodore 64'" that will open
up a whole new world of hardware and software for you! Imagine adding these
features to your Commodore 64'" for the Spartan™ price of S599: □ Apple ""II +
hardware and software capabilities □ 64K RAM expansion □ four
software selectable Commodore 64'" cartridge slots □ non-dedicated 8-bit
parallel port □ standard audio cassette deck capabilities for your C-64™.
The suggested retail value of comparable products offering only these
capabilities is over $2200.00* — but the Spartan™ gives you much, much
morel By building on your investment in your Commodore 64™ — an
excellent introductory computer — you create a whole new system
with both C-64™ and Apple™ II + capabilities. There is a whole other
world out therel The huge selection of Apple™ II + hardware and
software is now yours to explore! Call toll free for the Spartan™
dealer nearest you. '
FOR INFORMATION WRITE:
MIMIC SYSTEMS INC.
1112 FORT ST., FL, 6L
VICTORIA, B.C.
CANADA V8V 4 V 2
'All prices quoted ore In US lunds. freight and taxes not included, Value of components equivalent
to the Spoitan" system are quoted team Apple" 11+ CPU and Apple'" II 4 single disk drive 19BJ
list prices, and from current suggested list prices and component specifications of other
peripheral manufacturers. Commodore 64 ' and Commodore logo are trademarks at
Commodore Electronics UC. and ot Commodore Business Machines. Inc. Apple ■ 11+ is a
trademark of Apple Computer Inc. Spartan '" Is a trademark of Mimic Systems Inc and has
no association with Commodore Electronics or Apple Computer Inc. The Spartan " is
manufactured by Mimic Systems inc. under Jlcense granted by ATG Electronics Inc. of
Victoria. B.C. Canada.
TO ORDER CALL
1-800-MODULAR
(663-8527)
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